The Aliens Among Us
by DavidB226Morris
Summary: Summary: For more than two decades, Cat Grant has been sitting on a story that may transform the world – even more than usual. Now, she brings Kara into the world of a man who may have been the canary in the coal mine when it came to aliens. And the truth that is out there will stun even a visitor from another planet
1. Prologue

Summary: For more than two decades, Cat Grant has been sitting on a story that may transform the world – even more than usual. Now, she brings Kara into the world of a man who may have been the canary in the coal mine when it came to aliens. And the truth that is out there will stun even a visitor from another planet.

Disclaimer: Kara, Cat Grant, Alex, and just about everyone else from _Supergirl _is the joint property of DC Comics and Greg Berlanti. I don't agree with everything he's done to the characters, but I think much of what he's done is worth doing, and I will try to play by the rules he set. Mulder, Scully, and whoever else I bring into this from the _X-Files _belong to Chris Carter and the incredible team of writers that worked on the series.

Timeline and Universe:

For _Supergirl, _the series takes place around season 2, only Cat Grant will never have left Catco, and Kara has just begun her career in journalism. For _The X-Files, _this takes place around the same time as the revival series, so the timelines shouldn't be that out of sync. Now, for the larger issue.

I realize that the worlds that Fox Mulder and Kara Danvers exist in are completely different places, and if he had to deal with the fact that the President was actually an alien, he'd go nuts. (Though, if you've seen your Darin Morgan episodes, he might have an explanation for that, too.) And I'm not certain how he'd deal with a world where aliens are actually supported by the 24 hour news cycle. That said, there's a lot of common ground between the two worlds than there are differences, so I'm probably going to be making more changes to _Supergirl's world._

For now, I will simply say that Mulder and Scully are on Supergirl's Earth. However, Obama is still President, and a lot of the things that were history in our world have happened here. Now Alex Danvers and JonnJonez still work at the DOI, and the alien apocalypse that ended Season 1 happened. As for the conspiracy of the X-Files, well, that's going to be clear as we unravel the mythos.

Ready to stick with me? Then, here we go down the rabbit hole.

**Chapter 1**

Snapper Carr shook his head. "I can't believe I'm about to say this, but you're really going to go through with this?"

Cat Grant, head of Catco, had known Snapper for more than twenty years. She considered him a close friend, although Snapper mad it a point of pride about not having any. "This can't be any worse from when we split on the issue of superdelegates at the DNC?'

"This isn't the time for banter, Catherine, and I'm not just saying that because I was never good at it." Snapper wasn't going to be deterred.

Cat looked at him. "This is a whole new world we're living in. I knew it was a risk to embrace Supergirl as my own, and that paid off. And this can't be considered any more dangerous than that."

"Supergirl is a hero. No one ever lost money by raising the flag and cheering. This" Snapper shook his head again. "This really could damage everything you've built. Even if you do this perfectly, and I mean from beginning to the end, there is an excellent chance that Catco ends up being regulated from the biggest telecommunication player in the country to something that only the tinfoil hat crowd embraces."

"I'm a businesswoman, Snapper, I'm well aware of the possibility of financial downfall." Cat Grant turned away and looked out at the city. "But I'm also a journalist. And for the last few years, I've basically sat on my hands, knowing full well that there has been a man out there who predicted and foresaw a lot of what's happening. We're not talking broken clock right. We're talking atomic clock right. And I ignored it."

Snapper then actually narrowed his eyes a little, which for him was a sign of great concern. "You're not doing this out of some misplaced sense of guilt, are you?"

"I have guilt, Walter, it's definitely not misplaced." Cat was concerned. She only used Snapper's real first name when she was genuinely worried about something. "He was a prophet. He genuinely saw what was going on. And I regulated him to a trash heap. I know why I did it – even now, I can't fully blame myself for it – but he was right, and I was wrong. I couldn't admit this to Mike Wallace, but I can make it up to him."

Snapper considered this for a moment. "You're sure he's still alive?"

"I've done my homework. He's living on a farm in Newport News. Probably one step away from Ted Kaszynski territory. "

"When are you going to reach out to him?"

"Not until I know for certain that we have all the facts." Cat looked at him. "You're right about all the hits that we're going to take if I put him on camera. Which means, more than ever, that we have to be right. He needs to be more thoroughly vetted than any Supreme Court in the last twenty years, particularly when it comes to his opinions."

Snapper didn't even crack a smile. "I'm still not sure you're right about having the new girl handle this."

"Her name is Kara Danvers. And as many headaches as she's given me over the past year, the fact remains she has a connection to this story that I'd be a fool to deny. She'll go after it with the ferocity of one of those velociraptors. "

"And if the story goes wrong, we'll be accused of putting a rookie on what might be the biggest story since Metropolis," Snapper reminded her.

"Kara is many things – most of which you still can't say on my network – but she is anything but wet behind the ears. Once I point her in the right direction," Cat told him, "she will run this story to ground."

Snapper considered this for a minute. He knew Cat well enough to know that there was cunning even in her most virtuous moves. By putting the most junior reporter on this, she could have cover so that when this story blew up in their face (he couldn't imagine this _not _happening), it could be written off as the overreach of an overly ambitious neophyte. And even though there were parts of this story he still wanted to follow, he knew that he didn't want to go anywhere near it. He had too many ex-wives he owed alimony to.

"All right," he told her. "I'll send her up."

For a woman who could punch out alien colossus and outrun metahumans, Kara Danvers still felt nervous every time that she went into Cat Grant's office.

It wasn't just that Miss Grant was one of the most (if not _the _most) powerful women in business today, or that she had spent more than a year running errands and getting coffee for her at the drop of a hat. Nor was it the fact that she had come closer than anyone else in the world as to guessing her alter ego not three months after putting her on the map.

No, what was the most unsettling thing about Cat Grant was still, even after all the things that she had learned about her, something of an idol to her. For all the browbeating and put-downs she had endured, she still saw the woman who had, in little more than a decade, risen from rookie reporter to media titan. It was a rise that even now, could only be described as meteoric, and Kara had outraced more than her share of meteors.

So, even though she knew that Supergirl's role in the world was vitally more important than anything that Kara Danvers was doing right now, part of her still wanted to think that this job – the career in journalism she had just started – was somehow more important. Maybe it was because she felt that she would be doing something for herself, not for the world. There was a certain selfishness in that, she knew, but then again, she thought she was entitled to that. The world had Supergirl. Wasn't Kara entitled to a room of her own?

"You wanted to see me, Miss Grant?" she said, as she opened the door gently.

"We've been through a lot the last year, you and I," Cat Grant told her. "I think you've earned the right to call me Cat."

To say that Kara was floored would've been an understatement. Over the past several months, Cat Grant had acted a lot of the time as if she hadn't even known that Kara had a first name. And the few times she had used it, there had always been a certain level of mockery. And Miss Grant let almost nobody call her Cat. Even the President called her Catherine.

"I told you a couple of weeks ago that I saw a lot of myself in you, Kara," she was saying. "There's a blessing and a curse in that. You know better than most just how hard it is to be a woman trying to climb the corporate ladder. Multiply that by fifty, and you have an idea of just how difficult it was for me making my way in the world."

"I've always admired you. I know that you've been a pioneer. In your own way," she chose her words carefully, "you've been just as big an example as Supergirl."

"But there's always a cost to being where I am," Grant turned around and faced her. "You get started in a career such as this with such idealism. You want to make a difference. You want to shake up the system. You want, to use a particularly dull cliché, to change the world. It's only after you start looking back, that you start to see all the compromises that you have to make in order to get there."

Kara wasn't entirely sure where her mentor was going yet. But considering that Cat Grant rarely talked about her rise to power in anything other than glowing terms, she was glad to listen.

"You were what, 11, in 2003?" Grant asked suddenly.

"Yes."

"Then you would have been in fifth grade around the time Richard Clarke went before Congress." Cat looked towards one of the monitors that were everywhere in her office. "I was just in the process of building my first network. We'd been on the air less than a year, and this veteran CIA officer goes live to the country. 'Your government has failed you. I failed you.' Clarke basically tells America that the greatest attack in our nation's history could've been prevented. Even I had to admit, that was a true profile in courage. We have too few of them."

Kara knew that Grant was coming to a point, even though she had no idea where it was yet.

"I came very close to dying more times than I can count last year," Grant told her. "Now, I've been on military frontlines more than a few times in my life, but I've never counted my mortality as often as I have the last few months. And when you face your mortality, your life may not flash before your eyes, but your mistakes do. Now Oscar Wilde may have said that experience is the name that everybody gives to their mistakes. But they don't go on to consider about what that 'experience' costs everybody else. And certainly one doesn't often get the chance of righting those wrongs. That Kara Danvers, is the main reason I asked you here."

"You want me to help right a wrong?" Kara wasn't sure she followed.

"I want you to help me fix my biggest mistake."

"How big a story is it?"

Grant looked at her again. "Potentially bigger than Supergirl."

Considering who she was speaking to, she felt like she'd taken a blow from someone wearing kryptonite knuckles. And considering who had said it, the magnitude could be considering… well, more powerful than a locomotive. "What's it about?"

"What if I were tell you that nearly fifteen full years before Superman showed up on the radar, there was a man who knew that there were aliens on Earth? That not all of them were friendly, and in fact, a covert portion of our government was conspiring with them to colonize this planet?" Cat told her. "And that this same man didn't work for some fringe element of the Internet or talk radio, but rather for the federal government itself?"

Kara didn't think she was any longer capable of being shocked by anything. Even given with Jonn and Alex had told her over the past year, she had been given the impression that all government activity involving aliens had started the day Clark's alter ego had made his debut in Metropolis. Neither of them was in the interest of hiding anything from her; they had made that very clear when Lucy Lane had shown up. And even the DOA had been a purely defensive measure. This sounded far more insidious. "I would ask how reliable your source is?" she said, taking on the mantle of a reporter.

"That's where things get slippery," Grant admitted. "I never had a reason to doubt my source before that. He'd come through for me on a half dozen occasions before then. But when he first came to me with this intel, I did everything short of laugh him off, and suggest if he'd been wearing a tinfoil hat when he'd heard it. "

"When did he come forward with this information?" Kat asked.

"A little more than a quarter century ago," Grant now looked genuinely ashamed. "I had my own personal Mark Felt. And he wasn't just dropping hints, he was telling me who was getting the money and where the bodies were buried. If Bob and Carl knew about this…" She gathered herself. "But that's why I called you in. It may be several presidential administration too late to break the story, but I can offer the man one hell of a Corrections piece."

"He's still alive?" The way Cat Grant was speaking, Kara had naturally assumed the man was dead.

"He has been out of the Bureau for a long time," Cat told her. "That's right. I did bury the lead. The man in question worked for the FBI for more than fifteen years. I had to do a fair amount of digging in order to even find him."

"Who is he?"

"His name is Fox Mulder, and for nearly a decade, he operated what was probably the only unit in the entire government that had anything to do with the paranormal. He was a pioneer, a trailblazer. And as a reward, he was shunted to the basement of the building, given practically no assistance or acknowledgement from the Agency he worked for, was left for dead so many times you would think he was the lead on a soap opera, and the unit that he worked for is considered a cautionary tale." Grant looked at the wall of screen. "That, Kara, is where you and I are going to come in."

Kara had been delivering Cat Grant's coffee for so longer, she'd nearly forgotten what a great reporter she was. She still knew how to hook the listener. "What are we going to do?"

"You and I are going to get Mulder reinstated in the Bureau. And more importantly, we're going to get the X-Files reopened."


	2. Chapter 1

**CHAPTER 1**

This was a hell of a story that Miss Grant was spinning. And Kara thought she could make an educated guess as to what was in the X-Files. Nevertheless, she needed a lot more.

"You're telling me the Bureau had a department that investigated alien activity?" she asked.

"Not just aliens. Based on what Mulder told me, the X-Files were any case in the Bureau that had been designated unexplained," Cat told her. "Don't ask me why they were filed under 'X' and not 'U'. Even he didn't know. What he did know was that those files seemed to deal with just about every supernatural and paranormal event that you can imagine – or more accurately, the kinds of mutants and metahumans that have been attacked Metropolis, National City, and just about everywhere in between for the past few years."

It said a lot about what Kara was hearing that she suddenly felt the need to sit down. The Girl of Steel felt like her legs were suddenly made out of gelatin.

"How do you know all this?" she asked.

"That's a long story. I'll try to give you the Cliff Notes version, but I'm telling you up front that even _that _version may end up taking longer that the next novel in the _Game of Thrones _series." Cat admitted. "So I'll just limit the story to my own involvement, and I what I can confirm."

"Where does it start?"

"My first year at the _Daily Planet," _Cat told them. 'It was June of 1990. I'd been making a good impression with my editor – sexist bastard he might have been – but I still had yet to break a big story. I think it was because I was being such a nuisance that he gave me the D.C. beat."

"Your first year?" Kara was impressed.

"It says something about my ego at the time that I was pissed about it," Cat admitted. "Saddam Hussein was rolling into Kuwait. The Berlin Wall had fallen, and it was pretty obvious the Soviet Union didn't have much more life in it. The last thing I wanted to do was listen to something I could just as easily see on C-SPAN. But Perry White – who was still a journalist at the time – pulled me aside and told me that the D.C. beat might seem boring right then, but eventually I might find the story that I was looking for. The one that would make my reputation. He was right about that. The problem was, in doing so; I missed a far, far bigger one."

"In any case, I swallowed my pride, and went out to Washington. Of course, because my editor was a prick, he had sent me there while Congress wasn't in session and while the President was in Kennebunkport. I didn't expect to find anything worth a damn aside from Agricultural Reports and stories of tax reform, which were even less exciting then they sound. You wouldn't think that by giving someone the D.C. beat you would be trying to bury them, but that was my theory for the first few weeks."

Cat paused. "It's disgusting looking back on it how we get our first big stories. Mine was built on the back of murdered children."

"Mass shooting?"

"Worse," Cat said far too casually. "Two months into my first beat, the FBI, working in consultation with Quantico, arrested a man, who over a period of a decade, had been responsible for the kidnapping, strangulation and murder of thirteen young girls up and down the Eastern Seaboard."

Kara liked to believe in the good in humanity. It was stories like this that occasionally gave her reason to doubt it. "Who was he?"

"He was a vacuum cleaner salesman named John Lee Roche," Cat said grimly. "After he murdered each other girl – none of whom, by the way, were older than ten -, he would take a trophy. He was cut out a heart from each of their nightgowns. That's why he was classified as the Paper Hearts killer."

"There was barely such a thing as a twenty-four news channel back then, but it was big enough to make every major paper, network and local station for the next couple of days. The Bureau did what it does so many times, when it's working right. They focused on the arrest, and kept the details to a minimum. So I looked for an angle. And that is how I first met Fox Mulder."

"He arrested Roche?"

"Better. He came up with the profile that led to his capture." Miss Grant shook her head. "He was mentioned maybe once at the press conference. I was covering it. And that's when I had my first great idea."

"Given that every series that CBS or NBC produces these days has something to with profiling, it's hard to imagine there was ever a time when only law enforcement knew about it, and basically considered it the same level of calling in a psychic to solve a crime."

"James told me there are still some that think this way," Kara mentioned.

Grant nodded. "I have lunch with a couple every month. And for that matter, in 1990, the idea of profiling hadn't hit the mainstream. About a month after my article, _The Silence of the Lambs _hit theaters, and it became hard to avoid. Unfortunately, the move went out of its way to glorify the killers. I decided to try and celebrate the profiler."

"I'm guessing it wasn't easy."

"The Bureau was never big on commenting on procedure, and Fox Mulder was even harder to chase down. In the meantime, I did my homework. He was an Oxford-educated psychiatrist. He was considered some of a prodigy back then – his senior thesis had been responsible for catching a killer named Monty Propps, and his instructors Reggie Purdue and Bill Patterson both thought he was the most gifted profiler ever to come out of Quantico. The only sign of his flirtation with the paranormal back then was his nickname." Cat paused. "They called him 'Spooky' Mulder. "

"That doesn't sound like much of a compliment." Kara said.

"Purdue made it very clear that Mulder's nickname was because he had the gift of being able to get inside the head of killers so thoroughly that it unnerved even his fellow profilers." Grant told her. "Patterson said if he kept his nose to the grindstone, they'd renamed the Hoover building for him at the turn of the century. That's what they said. But I could tell they _really _didn't want to me to talk to him."

"But you convinced them."

Cat sighed. "Full disclosure. Fox Mulder was – and probably still is – a damn good-looking man. I have no doubt that they figured it would be easier for him to turn on the charm – and he had that, too - and I'd ignore his predilections and write a puff piece about him. And nine times out of ten, it might have worked. Not with me, of course, but probably with most of the would-be Murphy Browns who thought they were women journalists back then." She hesitated. "And to be fair, if I'd have thought that it would have gotten me a better story, I might've been willing to play along a little."

That was a hell of an admission for Cat to make. Her entire career had basically been based on the idea that she was the face of feminism.

"In any case, it was a moot point. Mulder was charming in our initial interview, but he was strictly professional. He was modest, self- effacing, and went into more detail then he should've when it came to about the process of profiling. And had this been all we talked about, our story would've ended right there."

"What did he say that made you think there was more?"

Cat thought for a long moment. "We were near the end of the interview, and almost out of the blue he just asked: 'Do you trust the government?'"

"Even back then, I was rarely at a loss for words. I went to my fall-back response. 'I'm a journalist. We're cynical by nature. And no one should trust a politician.'

'That's not what I meant. Do you trust the government?'

"My instincts weren't nearly as razor keen as they would become just a few years later. But somehow, I could tell that there was a lot riding on the question. I didn't owe the man anything. There was absolutely no reason I should've answered honestly. I did anyway."

"Not particularly. No.'

"He gave me one of those penetrating stares that probably could read right into the mind of John Lee Roche and God knew how many other human monsters. Then he gave me his card. 'In our business, we need to trust people. Can I trust you, Miss Grant?'

"Now when a government source offers you their phone number, you take it. Doesn't matter how high or low-ranking they are. I took it, and he told me he'd been in touch. At the time, I just added it to my File-O-Fax and went on with my beat. "

Cat paused again. "How much geometry do you know?"

Kara was now used to her boss' seeming non sequiteurs. "I was pretty good at it in high school."

"I never was, and it's one of those things I've never seen much point to instructing teenagers. I graduated magna cum laude and have been Time Magazine Person of the Year three times. I've never once had any use for the Pythagorean Theorem. But I do remember a couple of things that are pertinent. I know that on a geometric axis, you can sometimes have lines that are parallel, and sometimes you have lines that are intersecting. At the time, I thought that Mulder and I might be on parallel lines, and that we could use this arrangement to move upward and onward." She paused again. "In actuality, our first meeting was that of two intersecting lines. Mine was heading up and his was heading down. And my guess is, admittedly knowing what little I do about the man; he probably wouldn't have changed a thing."

"It didn't seem that way at the time, of course. He went back to his job, and I went back to mine. I stayed in D.C for the next year, and dealt with typical Washington business. I attended my share of briefings about the First Gulf War. I interviewed members of the Congressional Black Caucus, and I was first on the scene when Anita Hill showed up and put sexual harassment front and center in a way it never had been before. And every so often, Mulder would call and give me a heads up when something major Bureau investigation was about to unfold."

"No one ever made a link between you and him?" Kara asked.

"Most of them had nothing to do with him. It's possible the people at Quantico may have remembered the interview I did of Mulder, but if they did, there were no consequences. Certainly no one tried to shut me out, and even if they had, the Planet was right up there with the Times and the Post for papers you didn't want to get on the bad side of." Cat told her. "I'd like to think my burgeoning reputation was at least part of the reason, but the truth is, I still wasn't considered much more than a Beltway journalist back then, and they were a dime a dozen. The oddest thing about my relationship with Mulder was that for the first year he was my man on the inside, he never asked for a quid pro quo. Maybe he was saving up his favors until he really needed them. At the time, he certainly didn't."

"When did that change?"

"It was November of '91. The Cold War was on the verge of coming to an end. Democrats were going to the rare effort of declaring they wouldn't run for President against the seemingly invincible Bush 41. Nevertheless, the editor said that I should probably start making a trip down to Iowa anyway. He called me about three days before I was scheduled to fly to Ames, and asked if we could talk. This was odd in itself. He'd been calling me on and for the past year, but we'd never met face to face since then."

"By all rights, I should've told him I didn't have the time, because I didn't. This was going to be my first primary campaign, and there are a lot of things you have to do for those trips. But he'd been a good source for me, and I figured I at least owed him a coffee. I said I'd meet with him that afternoon, and he jumped at the chance." Cat shrugged. "In all candor, I kinda thought he was going to cash in his IOU. And he did, but it wasn't nearly what I expected him to ask for."

"I don't follow you," Cat was still trying to get a handle on what Mulder was asking for. "I'm just a reporter. You really think if I ask they'll just give me these files?"

"No, I don't, "Mulder admitted. "But being a member of the Fourth Estate, you can at least act upon the public's right to know. Believe me when I tell you, the public needs to have access to this information."

"You're going to have to give me more than that, Agent Mulder," Cat asked.

Mulder hesitated for so long that Cat genuinely thought he might just walk away from the whole thing. Finally, he looked at her dead in the face. "When you did the initial story on me, what did you learn about my family?"

This seemed like a very strange thing to ask. "It was a year ago, I'm not sure I remember," Cat tried to hedge.

"You're a journalist. They never forget anything they've researched."

Cat gave a small smile. "I know that your father, William Mulder, worked at the State Department until just a few years ago. I know he divorced your mother in 1976 for so-called irreconcilable differences. And I had to guess, it had something to do with the disappearance of your sister, Samantha in November of 1973."

Mulder took this in. "My sister didn't disappear. She was taken."

This wasn't in the file. "She was kidnapped."

"Abducted."

"That's semantics."

"Depends on who took her."

"And you have suspicions. That the government's involved somehow."

"They're involved, but I don't necessarily believe they have here."

This was becoming exasperating. "Agent Mulder, in forty-eight hours, I have to be on a flight to Des Moines. Now I agreed to meet you because you've been very reliable in the past, and I suspect you will be in the future. But I didn't come here to engage witty banter and worthless wordplay. Now, unless you're willing to tell me what the hell you want –"

"I think my sister was abducted by aliens when I was twelve years old."

For a moment, she didn't think she'd heard right. "Say that again."

"My parents were next door with the neighbors. The power went out. There was a bright light, and she started floating through the air." Mulder paused. "I know how it must sound."

"I don't think you do." Cat's power as a reporter – to take in even the most insane story and react reasonably – had momentarily failed her. "Even if I were to accept the premise that aliens exist – which I don't, by the way – I find it impossible to believe that would be as cruel and malicious as to abduct an eight-year old girl."

"That doesn't even begin to cover it". Mulder seemed willing to double down on his craziness. "A few months ago, I received access to a department in the Bureau that deals with cases involving just this kind of activity."

"Department?" Cat raised an eyebrow.

Mulder sighed. "All right, it's a file cabinet in a storage closet. A place where the Bureau dumps its refuse of cases they don't even want to try to explain. The supposed reason is that they are outside the Bureau mainstream. The real reason is that if anyone even bothered to read them, they'd look at them with the same scorn and disbelief that you are right now."

That remark managed to momentarily penetrate the barrier Cat had put up. She was supposed to be objective, and she was treated she'd considered, until five minutes ago, a reliable source like he'd opened his trench and shown that he was wearing a feather boa. "What kind of files?"

"I've spent the last few weeks going through them, and I have a feeling I've only scratched the surface." Mulder said with the first real excitement she'd heard in his tone from all the time she'd known him. "All of the supernatural creatures that we consider urban legends, all the stories that we dismiss as modern myth seem to be here. And permeating all of them is the possibility that extra-terrestrial life not only exists, but has been visiting this planet for a very long time."

This was madness. And yet insanity had never sounded more logical than in Mulder's tone. Cat Grant didn't believe the government was being truthful about a lot of things – she'd been honest when Mulder had asked her that question. But that was miles away from believing spaceships or little green men. She decided to play this out a little longer.

"Where are they from?"

"A galaxy far, far away."

"Agent Mulder, you're asking a hell of a lot from me. Now is hardly the time to be glib."

"I don't know where they're from. I couldn't even give you a reasonable description of any of them. What I have found in those files is case after case of men and women being abducted and put through tests and procedures so torturous it makes the Nazis look like pikers. And since you know my mother is Jewish, I don't use that term lightly."

That sounded a little more realistic. "What kind of procedures?"

"Drilling and surgery without anesthetic. Exposure to radiation levels not seen in nature. Extraction of women's ovaries. So many different cases, you would think it impossible for no two to be alike. And in the soft tissue, one finds microscopic implants with purposes that no one find a purpose for. Only that it involves technology that is years, if not decades ahead of what we are seeing in the most advanced supercomputers."

"And you think things like that happened to your sister." Cat was trying to find something to ground this in.

Mulder's exuberance faded. "The brother in me is holding to the idea that she is somewhere safe. The realist in me, late at night when I can't sleep, almost wishes that she'd been abducted by someone nearly as deviant as the men I spent years trying to catch at Quantico. Because at least then there might be an end to it."

It was this statement, more than anything else that Mulder had said about aliens that almost convinced Cat that there might be something to this. She had talked to some people whose children had disappearing and were still missing after years, and no matter how long they had been missing, some part of them was still holding out the faintest of hopes. Mulder had undergone this loss, understood it better than almost any profiler in Quantico, and if part of him really wanted to imagine his sister dead because that might be preferable to the alternative, that was a level of commitment that Cat didn't think she'd ever be capable of.

"If I were to do this," she said very slowly, "where would I even begin to look?"

"I've made requests using my clearance to try and get access to government files referring to Air Force bases around the country. All of these files have been marked classified."

"What does the government have to do with any of this?" Cat demanded.

"You already think I'm certifiable," Mulder told her. "If I tell you any more of what I believe without evidence, you're going to call for the men in white coats."

"Fair point," she conceded.

He took out a slip of paper. "I want you to see whatever information you can find involving these dates and locations. Just do me one favor. Don't send it in until you're in Iowa, and it'll be harder to pin down your exact location." The doubt on her face was palpable because he added. "You're a good reporter, Catherine. I don't want a bus that you're on to blow a tire and crash into a snow bank."

"You're not exactly convincing me about the level of your sanity here," Cat said, as she took the paper.

"You know my reputation. That ship sailed years ago."

"That was the last time I saw Mulder for more than a year." Cat told Kara.

"Did you follow through with his request?"

"As hard as it may be to fathom considering where I am now, I left that meeting convinced my source was experiencing some form of burnout from his time in Quantico," Cat told her. "It would be increasingly common for profilers over the decades. In fact, one of Mulder's bosses, Bill Patterson, about five years after I talked to him, he suffered a psychotic break, and killed three people. Given how tightly wound Mulder was, I really thought he was going through some kind of PTSD." Cat paused. "But that doesn't answer your question."

"Given the whole atmosphere of the time, it would've been understandable if you decided to just forget what had happened," Kara said gently.

"Aliens were considered the stuff of bad sci-fi movies at the time," Cat admitted. "And even given my relative inexperience as a reporter, I knew that to even hint about that in circles was likely to end with you being sent doing local news on dog pageants in Central City. It says something for how persuasive Mulder could be that I considered it plausible for a few seconds. I put the paper in my pocket, and then I buried myself on the trip to Iowa."

Cat sighed. "Presidential campaigns trips, particularly primary ones, are thuddingly dull. And the one leading up to '92 was even more so, because everybody knew that Harkin was going to win the caucus. I was assigned to following the Kerrey campaign – Bob, not John – and that was even duller. After two weeks following him, I was beginning to wish I'd stay in D.C. These campaigns were so long, you barely had time to pause and do laundry. On one of the rare off-days, I was going through my wardrobe, trying to see what needed to be washed." She paused. "And there it was. I was sure it had been lost, but it followed me all the way to Ames."

"So what did you do?"

"I put it in a file, wrote as bland a request as I could, and sent it in. Then I forgot about it until the caucus and we were about to leave for New Hampshire." Cat paused. "It's funny. I was as grounded and realistic as a person as you could think of back then. But the first time I really think I believed in the paranormal had nothing to do with what Mulder told me four months ago. It happened when I came to my motel, and there was this envelope waiting for me, from the DOD. I took the file, locked myself in the room I had been five minutes away from checking out of, and tore it open. "

"What was it?" Kara hated that she was asking the obvious question.

"Nothing," Grant told her. "Oh, there were thirty pages there, but they were almost all entirely redacted. I swear, on some of the pages they had blacked over everything but 'a', 'an' and, 'the'. It was like to trying to read a document from the Communist regime."

"Couldn't you have used some kind of technology to read it?"

"It was the '90s, Kara. The technology that's now all but available on every IPod was barely available in government offices. And to be perfectly honest, I thought that this was some second-level bureaucrat playing some kind of third-level joke. So I dumped the papers in a wastebasket." Cat heaved a sigh. "It was one of the biggest mistakes I ever made as a journalist, second to saying that America wasn't ready for a black president in 2007."

"You never got the papers to Mulder?" This didn't sound like the Cat Grant Kara had gotten to know over the past year.

"In retrospect, he probably not only could've found the tech to scan them, but would've had the patience to go through them line by line." Cat actually looked ashamed. "Now I don't remember many of the words that were on that document, but there were three that should've set off alarm bells if I'd had any idea what I was looking for."

Kara thought for a second. "Don't tell me."

"Roswell, New Mexico." Cat held her head in her hands. "In my defense, Roswell wasn't anywhere near the buzzword it was back then, but that alone would have told Mulder he was on the right track. God knows how many years I could've shaved off his quest if I'd just mailed him the damn file."

"So this is your mistake?" Kara could see why Cat was beating herself up over this.

"I'm afraid the story actually gets worse after this, Kara. Not only did I screw the pooch monumentally with this, I had multiple occasions in which to correct this wrong over the next _decade _and I continuous and stubbornly continued to drop the ball." Cat looked at her. "I prefer to look at this as one huge mistake as opposed to a series of small ones, but no matter how you look at it, I took a bad situation and made it worse."

"Not only did I not see Mulder for more than a year, I didn't even think about him for nearly as long. The campaign began to slowly but surely get more interesting as Bill Clinton managed to rise from the ashes. I followed him and the rest of the contenders for four months. After Michigan, when it was all but over, they were impressed enough by my work – though it was far from my best – to cover many of the larger senatorial and gubernatorial races. 1992 was called 'The Year of the Woman', so why not have a woman journalist covering it?" Cat looked pissed. "My god, my early editors were unimaginative. In any case, when the votes were all counted, this barely stable Neanderthal figured it would be adorable for me to go back to D.C. to see all these women being sworn in. By this time, I had become so ambitious that I had almost completely forgotten Mulder or his request. But he had not forgotten me."

"I arrived in D.C. on January 17, 1993. The day before Clinton was sworn in, I learned that I wasn't done with the X-Files. More intriguingly, I got the second half of the story."

Cat paused for a long moment. "Kara, do you believe in the idea of a soulmate?"

This was even more out of left field than the story of the X-Files. This time, however, Kara had a ready answer. "Not really. I think it's a Hollywood trick."

"I'm inclined to agree. I think it's something out of badly written 80s rom-coms, and even worse written 90s TV shows," Cat told her. "I do, however, believe that are meetings of people who, no matter how opposite their belief systems are, are in every possible way, perfect compliments. There aren't a lot of them. In my entire life, in fact, I've only met three. Clark Kent and Lois Lane, as much as pains me to admit it. James Carville and Mary Matalin, honestly I never saw that one coming. And as for the third set I saw, but as far as I know, the two of them never were willing to admit it to themselves. Maybe not until it was too late."

"Excuse me?"

"I'm getting ahead of myself. In January of 1993, I met Mulder's partner, Dana Scully. " Cat looked ahead. "She was a forensic pathologist, one of the few professions I absolutely know I could never handle."

"You've been to war zones," Kara reminded her.

"There's a huge difference from seeing death, and actually having to see what causes it. I've been to my share of autopsies; I don't think I could actually handle a career of performing them." Cat looked at her. "In appearance, she was even less imposing than I am. She was two inches shorter than me, and maybe even a little skinnier. Battling to get through the Bureau's physical requirements for field work must have been a battle in itself. But just as in my case, appearances were deceiving. I didn't find this out until after our first meeting, but in her senior thesis, not only did she try to debunk Einstein, she came damn close to actually doing it." She held up a hand. "Don't ask me to explain. Physics has never been my strong suit."

"How did you meet her? Did Mulder introduce you?"

"That would've been too easy. By this point, Mulder was now, more or less, in charge of The X-Files. In the time between by departure and return to DC, he'd gone from golden boy to gadfly. Scully was a rookie agent who'd been teaching at the Academy, and because she had a background in science, the powers-that-be thought that she could provide a counterbalance to Mulder's work. At least, that's the story they told her. She thought that she was there to debunk the X-Files. Mulder thought she was there to spy on him."

"Which was it?" Kara asked.

"If I had to guess, Scully was there to do both." Cat told her. "But just as they had seriously underestimated Mulder's persistence, they also misjudged Scully's integrity. I realized that the first time I met her."

_January 19, 1993, Georgetown_

"Catherine Grant?"

Cat turned to see a small, red-headed woman approach her table. She was a little surprised by the introduction – she'd stopped going by 'Catherine' during the debates. "I'm sorry, have we met?"

"No, but I know you by reputation. Your articles in the Planet on why journalists should not run for public office was superb." She offered Cat her had. "I'm Special Agent Dana Scully."

Ever since Cat had started as a reporter, she had always greeted everybody, male or female, with as strong a handshake as she could muster. She knew that most of the men she interviewed thought that women were weaker by nature, and that woman in positions of power were always afraid to show any sign of weakness. She greeted this stranger with the same firm grip, and was rather surprised to see this woman, who she could probably beat in a street fight, met her with an equal measure. No doubt Dana Scully probably faced an even higher class ceiling than she did.

"You have me at a rare disadvantage," she said. "I haven't had a contact in the FBI for nearly two years."

"That's what I wanted to talk to you about. We have a mutual colleague in common."

Finally, it clicked. "You're working with Fox Mulder?" she said, offering Agent Scully a seat.

"For the past couple of months, yes." Scully sat down. "I haven't known him for that long, but one thing I've quickly picked up on is that he doesn't trust a lot of people Not in the Bureau hierarchy, not in the corridors of power, and not in the press. In fact, the only reason I know that he trusts you was because he saw you at the first press conference after the election, and said that you were the only reporter there who had the balls to take on the establishment."

"His words or yours?" Cat asked.

"He used a less explicit term," Scully said with a smile. "He said he knew he could trust you because you never burned him as a source, and you did the absolutely right thing when he asked you for a favor."

For the first time in a long time, Cat felt something close to guilt. "What did he tell you I did?"

"You didn't laugh him out of the room. " Scully told her. "I don't know what he asked you for, but he told me that he never for a moment expected you to go through with it. You were one of the few people who he'd ever revealed his beliefs to who never judged him."

Cat wasn't sure how to take that, especially considering her mixed response to it. She decided not to reveal what she had found – a decision she would bitterly regret later on. "What do you think of what he's told you?"

"I haven't been working at the X-Files that long," Scully tried to wave off the question.

"You must have formed some kind of opinion."

Scully considered this for a moment. "Agent Mulder believes we are not alone," she said simply. "I told him early on that I thought that the belief of extraterrestrial life was illogical at best and unscientific at worst. But at this point, I am withholding my final decision."

Cat decided she liked this woman. Which was a shock, because Cat Grant didn't like a lot of women, even those who pursued a career. "Why did you come to see me? Don't tell me Mulder has you running his errands."

"He wouldn't dare," Scully gave a smile. "Actually, this was my idea. Mulder told me early in our partnership that the only reason he's been able to maintain his position in the Bureau is because he's managed to make well-placed allies in Congress. I pointed out to him how fickle the electorate could be, and that it might not hurt to make a friend or to in the press. He said that you were the only journalist that he trusted."

Cat almost found herself blushing at this, considering that she hadn't exactly been willing to go along with the one favor he'd asked of her. "I haven't exactly built up much of a reputation yet," she reminded her.

"He mentioned that might be an argument for your involvement," Scully shrugged. "You don't have much of a career to wreck on him."

"I'm not sure that's his strongest argument."

"He also said that you believed in the truth. And even though I haven't known him for that long, I know for damn sure that's one of the things he holds the most dear."

Both parts sounded like the Fox Mulder she had come to know over the year they had collaborated. And even though she was an ambitious woman and really didn't want to throw her career to the tabloids, she figured there was a good argument that she still owed him. "I'm only going to be in DC until the Inaugural Ball," she reminded Agent Scully. "And you know as well I do how difficult it can be to reach any reporter on assignment."

"We're both well aware of that," Scully pointed out. "Which is why Mulder wanted to know if you had heard of the Internet."

"If anything should date me, it's the fact that I barely even knew of the Internet's existence at the time," Cat told Kara. "In my defense, it was barely heard of outside of the DOD and some of the more obscure tech people back then. The Daily Planet wouldn't establish an email account until that fall."

It said a lot about Kara that it was even harder for her to imagine a time when the net was limited to a few thousand people discussing _Star Wars. _ "And I assume the only reason Mulder and Scully knew about it was because they worked for the government."

"Bingo," Cat said. "And I think it was for just that reason that Mulder figured this would be the safest way for us to make contact. That, and he had something of a taste for the theatrical back then. Maybe he still does."

"So what happened next?"

"Scully gave me an email account, and told me that either she or Mulder would communicate with me through it periodically." Cat shook her head. "The only reason I still get communications from AOL is because of the original account I set up in February of 1993. I don't even know if spam existed back then."

"For the next year or so, every couple of weeks, I would receive an email from an account with the user name Reynard. Scully made it clear before I left that I was not to write any stories fro the Planet. I was merely to forward it to certain selected websites, and other users I never identified."

Now Kara felt a little insulted. "He was using you as a go-between."

Cat raised a hand. "Mulder was a gentleman above all else. The entire time I knew him, he never so much as threw a pass at me. And I imagine he was trying to protect me above all else. He had no problem torpedoing his career – I think he'd decided it was a lost cause long ago – but he didn't want mine to be collateral damage as well. And I'm pretty sure on more than one occasion he tried to keep Scully from torching her own. Not that it made much difference in the end."

"What kind of information did he ask you to disseminate?"

"The lion's share of it had to do with either alien abductions or government conspiracies, both of which I'm sure were mother's milk to him. The stories I remember would've kept Hollywood in business for decades. He told me about the crash of a UFO in Wisconsin that may have been responsible for the deaths of a dozen people, including a multiple abductee called Max Fenig. A eugenics project in the Cold War that eventually involved two young girls who murdered their parents. A mutant who had the ability to conceal himself inside any confined space, so that he could harvest and devour people livers every thirty years – and that the government, once they had him in custody, released him to an ordinary family. All of the stories he or Scully sent to had material that was decades ahead of its time, but to be perfectly honest, right then I thought he was just feeding an uninformed public fairy tales." Cat told her. "And considering some of the stuff you see on Facebook these days, there's a part of me even now that still shudders at what he might have let loose."

"When did it end?" Kara asked.

"That was one of the oddest parts of what is already a very strange story," Cat told her. "It was April of 1994. I can't remember the exact date, but I'll never forget the communication. I got an encrypted email, and unlike all of the ones I'd gotten before, Mulder personally addressed this one. I can remember it, word for word, even after twenty-two years."

"'Clear all available schedule with Daily Planet. Will have definitive proof of extra-terrestrial life confirmed within the next twenty-four hours. This will change the world.'"

"Now Mulder had always been circumspect in his communications with me, always keeping in vague terms, saying nothing was available for general audiences. I knew that for him to go this big was a huge deal, and that he had to be sure. But even then, I wasn't going to do anything until I saw this proof."

Even knowing that there was alien life, Kara had chills down her spine. "What went wrong?"

"I waited twenty-four hours. Nothing. Forty-eight hours. Still nothing. I was beginning to think that he shafted me, and despite my skepticism, I was a little pissed." Cat paused. "Two days after that, Mulder called me. Now even though we'd been in communication for the last year, he hadn't tried to talk to me since then, and I hadn't given either him or Scully my new number. I'm still not certain how he managed to find it. But that would become the least of my concerns."

"Mulder, what the hell happened?" Cat demanded, in the indignant tone was already coming to know. "You make it sound like you have the biggest story since the discovery of the A-bomb, and then radio silence. What the hell…"

"Do you still have records of all the stories I sent you?" Mulder sounded a lot different than the other times she talked to him.

"What does that have to do with anything?"

"Yes or no."

Cat considered this for a moment. "I still have them saved on my hard drive."

"Erase them. If you have to, destroy the hard drive."

Cat blinked at this. "What are you talking about that?"

"After that, I need you to delete the account you set up to disseminate the stories I sent you." Now Cat recognized what was different about Mulder's voice. He sounded hollowed out, defeated. "And after that, I want you to forget you ever heard if or met me or Agent Scully."

Cat stopped dead. "Mulder, I don't understand."

"Damn it, Catherine!" Now Cat was really alarmed. Not only had Mulder shouted at her, he had used her full name. Nobody did that any more. "I'm trying to protect you! Enough people have already lost their lives because of my pursuit of the truth. I don't want you to be another casualty."

Mulder sounded worried. Really worried. Whatever had happened in the last week had thrown the fear of God into him, and he had always been an agnostic. She didn't want to give up on a big story, but she knew something really terrible had happened if he was about to torch this relationship.

"All right, Mulder. If that's what you really want."

"I don't want to," Mulder actually sounded despairing now. "You may not realize it but you've done a great service to me, even if it didn't seem like it. But there are just some things I can't sacrifice. And you've got your whole future ahead of you."

"And you don't?"

There was silence on the other end for so long, Cat thought he might already have hung up. "My life is my own. I have to take other people into consideration. Otherwise, I'm no better than them."

There were so many questions in that statement to unfold. But she knew Mulder had told her everything he was going to. "Promise me something," she said instead.

"If I can."

"That you won't give up. The world needs more people like you."

"Basement dwellers?"

"Truth-seekers."

Another long pause. "I won't give up. Not as long as the truth is still out there." He paused. "Don't you give up, either. The world needs more people like you, too."

"Never." Cat swore. And she meant it.


	3. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

"Mulder was frightened in a way I'd never heard. So I did something I had never done before, and would never do again," Cat told a spellbound Kara. "I let a man's decision dictate my actions. I did exactly what he asked me to. I purged my hard drive, and I dismantled the account. I haven't spoken to Mulder since."

It was a hell of a story, but Kara knew Cat well enough that she wouldn't have been telling her all this based on something that happened more than twenty years ago. "Bur that clearly was the last you heard of him."

'To quote Perry White, give the girl a cigar," Cat gave a small smile. "For the next several years, despite his efforts to stay out of the glare of the media, Mulder would sporadically make cameos in that same world. And fortunately, because I'm now the owner of major media conglomerate and have an excellent memory, I was able to get some of my people put together a montage of Mulder, so to speak. Because seriously, for a story, you really need visual aids."

Cat walked over to her computer. "I've also some digging on my own, as to what might he might have been looking into at the time. I have some factual evidence, but sadly, for the majority of it, we have to dwell in the realm of the 'what-if'.

She pushed a button on her keyboard. The monitors that usually showed footage from every angle of Catco came to life.

"We've been monitoring this hostage situation for more than three hours. An escapee from an institution is apparently holding multiple people at gunpoint in this travel agency for the past six hours. The FBI is on the scene, but as of yet, no details have been released."

An ambulance was pulling up to the front door. A man wearing Kevlar and hospital whites came out. He looked to be in his early thirties, with dark hair and a fairly prominent nose. Cat hit pause. "Behold Fox Mulder."

Kara looked very closely. "When was this footage taken?"

"August 9th, 1994, about four months after my last conversation with Mulder," Cat told her. "I was in Simi Valley, covering the early stage of O.J.'s first trial, when this news came over CNN. "

"Why would Mulder be called in for hostage negotiation?"

"Not just any hostage negotiation. As the world would find out a few hours later, the man who was holding these people was Duane Barry, ex-FBI."

That stirred a vague memory in Kara's head. "Why does that name sound familiar?"

"Barry claimed to be a multiple alien abductee. I later had a conversation with the Agent in charge – a woman named Lucy Kazdin. She didn't his claims seriously – the man had been institutionalized for seven years after all – and she called in Mulder because she wanted someone to talk 'alien jargon' to make Barry release the hostages." Cat shook her head. "She didn't know that Barry was going to become the first known case of an abductee staging just this scenario. All she cared about was getting Barry out, and getting the hostages out alive. Which Mulder managed to do."

Now Kara remembered where she had heard this time. Alex had told her about being called in to handle scenarios just like this on occasion at the DOI. They had been called Duane Barry scenarios. "How did it end?"

"After it ended, I went back to jury selection," Cat shook her hand. "Not only did I miss a bigger story, I personally didn't follow up on how severely it would end affecting Mulder and Scully."

Now Kara blinked. "I thought Barry had been neutralized."

"Less than twenty-fours after been hospitalized, Barry somehow escaped from a guarded facility, and got another prisoner." Cat now seem genuinely shaken. "Dana Scully."

Kara was thrown. "How the hell did that happen?"

"Even today, there's still so much about this case that no one understands. Barry overcame Scully, tied her up, and put her in the truck of a stolen car. He then drove to Skyland Mountain in Virginia, where he was apprehended. Two hours after that, he died in FBI custody." Cat looked right at her. "His murderer was never found."

"What happened to Scully?"

"No one knows that either. On August 10th, Dana Scully was declared a missing person. An FBI manhunt revealed no trace of what had happened to her. Nor could they explain how she mysteriously appeared at a Georgetown Hospital on November 13th, clinging to life." Cat looked like she was on the verge of losing her iron control. "I've read her medical reports. Her immune system was decimated. Her own family took her off life support the next day." She paused. "Two days later, she regained consciousness, and eventually made a full recovery. There's no medical explanation for that either."

Kara had seen some remarkable things in her life – she'd actually been the cause of a lot of them - but she didn't have a ready answer as to just how that would've been possible. "When did you learn of this?"

"Earlier this year." Cat told her. "I've got to be honest. Had I known about this when it happened, the Cat Grant of twenty years wouldn't have been able to deal with that kind of story. That Cat Grant, despite everything Mulder had disseminated to me for nearly a year and a half, was closer to Scully's mindset than his. And if I'd be completely honest, the Cat Grant standing in front of you still can't come up with a rational or even irrational explanation of what happened."

"But now you think Scully was abducted by aliens," It seemed odd saying that. Almost like a betrayal.

"Someone took her hostage, and much as Mulder would've preferred to believed his sister had been taken by a child molester rather than little green men – his words, not mine – I think I'd rather believe the latter happened than the former, because we are well aware of the inhumanities that man is capable of." Cat paused. "I actually might've been able to get answer had I followed through with the next time Mulder's name came up."

"When was that?"

"May of '95. I was in DC again, doing an op-ed on the Contract with America when I heard the name. Only it wasn't Fox, it was father. Bill Mulder, who lived in Chilmark, Massachusetts, was found dead in his home, the apparent victim of a home invasion." Cat paused. "Funny sort of home invasion, though. Nothing was taken, and Bill Mulder was found shot in his bathroom. But that's the story that was fit for public consumption."

"What did you know about Bill Mulder? You'd said you'd done research on him."

"I hadn't dug nearly as deep as I could have," Cat admitted. "He worked in the State Department, starting at the height of the Red Scare in the 50s. Most of his work was highly classified, and after his daughter went missing in 1973, he seemed to have dropped out entirely. He got divorced, and the rumors were he'd become an alcoholic."

"Did you try to follow up with his son?"

"That's where things start getting weird. Two days after his father was killed, Fox Mulder disappeared from public view. I went to the funeral of his father about a week later, figuring he'd certainly show up there." Cat paused. "The gossip going around what that the son had last been seen in New Mexico, and was also presumed dead."

That was a twist Kara wasn't expecting. "But he was alive."

"I didn't find that out until later. I did, however, see Agent Scully having a discussion with Mulder's mother. She said she thought he was alive. I actually wanted to talk with her, but before I could get close, this man – he was in his seventies, and looked incredibly well-groomed – had this very intense conversation with her. I only got close enough to her the last words. And I never forgot them."

Scully demanded. 'Who are you people?' And the well-dressed man said: "We predict the future. And the best way to do that is to invent it.'

That was one of the most quietly unsettling things Kara had ever heard. "Did you get a chance to talk to Scully?"

Cat shook her head. "She walked right past me in a daze. I don't even think she saw me. I left the funeral. At that point, I really did feel like an intruder. I wish I had talked to her, given what happened next."

"Which was?"

"Unlike Mulder, Scully had a fairly big family. Her mother lived in Georgetown, and she had two older siblings, Bill and Melissa, and a younger brother named Charlie. Melissa lived in Baltimore, and she looked remarkably like her younger sister, which may have been the reason it happened."

A lead ball settled in Kara's stomach. "What?"

"Melissa Scully went into her sister's apartment, and was shot in the forehead. She lingered for another two days before dying. The initial investigation thought it was another mistaken burglary. "Cat gave a grim smile. "Quite a lot of those going around those families then, weren't there?"

For the first time since Cat had started talking, Kara was beginning to feel angry. "Who were these people? And why the hell did they think Mulder and Scully were such a threat to them?"

"That's a good question. Deserving of an answer I don't have." Cat told her. "What I do know is that, unlike in the case of Bill Mulder, Melissa Scully's murderer was actually caught. He was a mercenary named Luis Cardinal who was responsible for a lot of other suspicious activity, including the attempted assassination of an Assistant Director of the FBI. He might have had answers to some of those questions. But less than twenty-four hours after being arrested, he was found dead in his cell. Considering the sheer amount of death that seemed to surround Mulder and Scully, I'd have been a little paranoid myself by now."

"Maybe he was right to try and keep you out of this," Kara found herself saying. "The people he held dear to him kept dying."

"That may be the reason so many of our vigilante friends wear costumes," Cat admitted. "Perhaps he should've considered the same instead of carrying a shield. Not that it protected him from scrutiny or even scorn." She reached to her desk. "Even those who should have known better didn't."

She pulled out a book. "Recognize the publication?"

Kara did. _"From Outer Space, _by Jose Chung. I remember reading this when I was in college. _The Lonely Buddha _was required reading when I was in high school."

"It was when I was, too," Cat had a reminiscent smile on her face. "Chung was an unquestioned genius with an ego to match. He was one of those one in a generation talents. And with this one he created a whole new genre: the non-fiction science fiction.

"Mulder and Scully are in this book?"

"Only if you knew where to look for them. 'Diana Lesky, pure of heart and noble of spirit, and Reynard Muldrake, a ticking time bomb of insanity.' Sounds like an accurate description of someone who never got to know either of them that well." Cat shook her head. "When the book came out, I was so bust trying to stay on top on the Republican Primaries that I didn't have time to read it until the following spring. I wanted to schedule an interview with Chung to follow it up, but by then, he was working on his next book. By the time my schedule cleared, he was dead."

This seemed a little out of place. "Suspicious circumstances?"

"Actually, no. A serial killer targeted him. Ironically, that was the subject of his final book." Cat told her. "I wish I could say that 'From Outer Space' gives a clear picture of an alien abduction, but you remember what the book was like."

Indeed. In the preface, Chung had made a reference that he couldn't tell what actually happened, and his only conclusion had been: 'Truth is as subjective as reality.' "Do you have any idea if this is the kind of case Mulder and Scully would be called in on?"

"To quote a recurring theme from Chung: 'How the hell should I know?' I know the underlying interview that 'Muldrake' said that he had with Lt. Schaffer fits into a popular theory that surrounded alien abductions. The UFOs were just advanced supersonic aircraft, the 'aliens', test pilots, and scientists used hypnotism on the subject to make them certain they were probed by aliens.' But as to underlying concept, what was the second alien vessel…" Cat trailed off. "I'm willing to believe more than anything that Mulder didn't even bother to sit for an interview with Chung. It's not just how cavalierly he dismisses him in his summation, it's the fact that the Fox Mulder I knew believed subjects like this could do damage to a field that struggled for respectability back then."

"Are you going to ask him about when you talk to him?" Kara didn't know until now that she was basically agreeing to go along with all this.

"I have a feeling this is something he'd much rather leave back to history's dustbin." Cat shrugged. "Still, who knows? He must have his own opinion as to what really happened in Klass County. And I just can't believe one of those Men in Black was Alex Trebek."

"Could've been worse. It could've been Will Smith."

"That would've been prescient, considering the film didn't come out until the following year." Cat shrugged it off. "In any case, the main reason I didn't give much attention to Chung's book was because I got a dose of Mulder and Scully later in '96. It was just a few weeks after Clinton had won reelection, and I had finally earned my first real column."

She pushed another button. "I'm not entirely sure why C-SPAN was covering this particular hearing – or why anyone would've been interested in it – but you'll see soon enough why it caught my interest.

It was time stamped November 27, 1996. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and Terrorism was being gaveled into order, and a short red-headed woman in her early thirties was being sworn in. Kara knew before she even identified herself that she was looking at Dana Scully.

"I would like to read from a prepared statement," she told the committee.

"You may do so," the Senator said.

"I left behind a career in medicine to become an FBI agent four years ago because I believed in this country. Because I wanted to uphold its laws – to punish the guilty and to protect the innocent. I still believe in this country, but I believe there are powerful men in the government who do not, men who have no respect for the law and flout it with impunity. I have come to the conclusion that it is no longer possible –"

"Agent Scully" the committee chairman interrupted with more than a little irritation in his voice, "you have come before us to answer questions, not to make speeches."

"Agent Scully," a Senator Sorensen demanded, "do you or do you not know the whereabouts of Agent Mulder?"

Scully made the barest of pauses before responding: "I respectfully decline to answer that question, sir, because I believe answering that question could endanger Agent Mulder's life."

The chairman looked bewildered. "You don't seem to understand. Your response is not optional. You are an agent of the FBI."

Scully seemed a little nervous, but soldiered on. "Well, then, if I may please finish my statement. 'That it is no longer possible for me to carry out my duties –"

Sorenson interrupted. "Are you tendering your resignation, Agent Scully? Is that what you're trying to say?"

"No, sir." Scully said. "What I am saying is that there is a culture of lawlessness that has prevented me from doing my job. The real target of this committee's investigations should be the men who are beyond prosecution and punishment. The men whose secret policies are behind the crimes that you are investigating."

Sorenson perched forward, like a carrion bird approaching its prey. "Either you tell us what you know about Agent Mulder's location, or you will be held in contempt of Congress. "

A long pause. "Agent Scully."

The cameras cut to a bewildered commentator.

"What the hell just happened?" Kara demanded.

"Something that only happened once in the thirty plus years of C-SPAN's existence," Cat told her. "A witness was held in contempt of Congress and incarcerated. The definition of Must-See TV."

"Why?"

"Most of the information that was available was classified at the time," Cat told her. "It was only fairly recently that I managed to get a handle on the background. Approximately four days later, a man with Russian diplomatic papers fell from the balcony of a Georgetown apartment building. Among the residents was FBI Assistant Director Walter Skinner."

"I'm not seeing the connection," Kara said.

"Neither did I. Until I learned that among AD Skinner's duties was running the X-Files."

"You think he… killed this man?"

Cat shook her head. "He wasn't even in the building when it happened. But the man had UN diplomatic credentials, which meant his death would fall under the purview of Intelligence. And I can understand why they might privately question colleagues of Skinner. I didn't understand why they'd focus on Mulder. Until the next days hearings. I'm not entirely certain what Scully knew going into the hearings, but I have an idea, however vague, what she might have contemplating in the interim." She hit another button. "This footage is from the next day."

"Do you know the whereabouts of Agent Mulder?" Senator Sorenson continued to press.

Scully stood her ground. She said that she was prepared to answer questions about a dead courier found in Georgetown, the release of a lethal toxin that the courier had apparently been carrying, and the death of a virologist named Dr. Charne-Sayre, who the package was meant for. Neither Sorenson nor the Chairman seemed interested in any of this (though Kara definitely was) and finally Sorenson lost his composure.

"Answer the question, Ms. Scully!"

And then a voice in the back of the room spoke up. "What is the question?"

The cameras, as was traditional with C-SPAN were fixed on the front of the room. Kara could see the speaker, but whoever it was, his presence gave Scully courage. "Sir, if I may, I would like to continue making my point."

"What is your point, Miss Scully?" the chairman asked.

"That the death of Dr. Charne-Sayre, given her field of expertise, strongly suggests that she knew something about the toxin – about its origins. And that knowledge may be directly linked to the murder of the man outside Director Skinner's apartment building.

A balding man with glasses approached and whispered in Scully's ear. Scully then announced that another man had died – a Dr. Sacks. The chairman than seemed to realize something was amiss and he announced the temporary adjournment of the hearing "until the new matter can be explained. So that we may then begin moving in a forward direction."

The instant the session was adjourned, Scully leapt from her seat to the back of the room. Before the camera cut away, it saw her embrace a bruised and dirty Agent Mulder.

"Please tell me you have an explanation to what the hell's going on," Kara asked.

"I have puzzle pieces that don't make a picture," Cat admitted. "I know that Bonita Charne-Sayre was a virologist who was a well known physician, to the point that she served as one of Reagan's doctors. She was almost prominent in speaking about eliminating the remainder the last remaining stores of the small pox virus. Two days before the hearing, she was found dead in Charlottesville when a horse supposedly stepped on her neck."

A lot of questions were spinning in Kara's head. "Do you know who this Dr. Sacks was?"

"He was an exo-biologist at NASA. Approximately, a week before this hearing, he went to try and take a core sample from a rock that had come from a diplomatic pouch in Russia." Cat paused. "According to his notes, he believed the rock was from Mars. But the second he drilled into it, something infected him. Through his Haz-Mat Suit. No one could tell what it was. Or give an explanation for how he died a week later."

Pieces were beginning to fall together in Kara's head. Nothing Jonn had told her said anything about Mars being subjected to alien viruses, but he had left the planet centuries ago. Was it possible? "All of these people were dying, and all they cared about were where Mulder was?"

"Most Congressmen are lawyers, and the only reason any lawyer asks the wrong question is when they don't want the right answer." Cat told them. "Of course, that's presuming they were in charge of the hearing."

She said this so casually that it took a minute to register that she had said something far more frightening than any of the ideas of alien invasion. And Kara knew – Cat knew that there were aliens out there who did not have the same idealistic visions that Supergirl did. "That's not something a media mogul should be saying," Kara gently remarked.

"It's not something a journalist who wants to have a reputation at all should say," Cat admitted. "But I keep thinking of the question that Mulder asked me when he took me into his confidence. And about that redacted file. The last thing I want to even consider is the idea of some illuminati type government. But somebody was responsible for these people dying, and it sure as hell weren't the people who say they're public servants."

"This is freaky stuff," Kara admitted.

"I haven't shown you Act 3 yet." Cat told her. "Ten days later."

Scully once again prepared to testify. "What evidence are you presenting us today," the chairman interrupted.

"Documents and interviews," Scully began, "in support of a wide-ranging conspiracy to control a lethal biotoxin that is in fact extraterrestrial."

Sorenson – who Kara was beginning to think had orchestrated this entire circus – laughed in her face. "Are we, what? Talking about little green men here?"

And at that moment, Mulder rose from the gallery and erupted.

"Why is this so hard to believe? When the accepted discovery of life off this planet is on the front page of every newspaper in the world? When the most conservative scientists and science journals are calling for exploration of Mars and Jupiter – with every reason to believe that life and the persistence of it are thriving outside our terrestrial sphere? If you cannot get past this, then I suggest this whole committee be held in contempt – for ignoring evidence that can not be refuted."

The chairman seemed nonplussed – or maybe amused. "I suggest that this committee be adjourned until the evidence can be properly evaluated." And the hearing was gaveled out of session.

"I don't think I need tell you that, aside from this footage, there's no evidence in any public record, of any of these reports." Cat told her. "I came away from these hearing with a lot of question, but two absolute certainties. The first was, for daring to unequivocally state his beliefs in front of Congress, Mulder was either insane or incredibly brave."

"The two aren't mutually exclusive," Kara told her. "But I lean towards the latter. What's the second thing?"

"That Mulder and Scully were in love."

Kara actually jumped a little at that. "From what? The fact that he embraced her at the hearing?"

"The fact that she was willing to go to jail for him." Cat told them. "Oh, I have no doubt in my mind that Scully believed in the totality of what she was saying. And given everything that we've learned about the government in the last decade, she had every reason to mistrust them. But she was willing to sacrifice everything for her partner. That's definitely love."

Kara had missed that. "Was it mutual?"

"I'm sure of it." Cat said. "I think the only two people who might not have known were Mulder and Scully themselves. Oh, they knew – I have no doubt of that, either – but I have a feeling that some part of them – something that went beyond the standard bs of partners not being able to fraternize – were absolutely terrified of acting on it. Not that I blame them. A lot of people are paralyzed by fear. I just hope like hell they got past it someday."

There was a lot to take in. "I'm guessing you didn't write about this because you were busy with other things."

"I didn't have all the details about what the hell was going on until years later." Cat told her. "Plus by now I had a clear goal in mind. I was going to become the female equivalent of Ted Turner, and I had to deal with long-term goals. And though I was becoming more and more convinced that Mulder and Scully were on to something very big here, I was not convinced enough – and not brave enough – to put into print. I doubt any journalist would've been, even given the fact that the 1990s were slowly but surely become one of the most paranoid decades in the history of time."

"I concentrated my efforts on building up my reputation and my contacts in the world of cable broadcasting. And much to my dismay, I didn't give either Mulder or Scully much though for more than a year. The next time I did, we may have come closer than anyone figured to something far darker." Cat paused. "And the irony is, I first became aware of it because of what Mulder didn't seem willing to say."

"It was February of 1998. The furies that were surrounding the Clinton Administration were about to burst. I was in the early stages of acquiring partnership in an obscure cable network. About a week before the sale went through, a colleague of mind sent me something that he felt was kind of weird." She pushed a button. "This came from a Boston public access channel. "They were covering a discussion over alien abductions. I wasn't surprised Mulder was there. But what he said… that's a different story."

"Much like we think of our relationships with God," a man in a gray suit was saying. "And that there are sites – what she calls lighthouses – around which there will be great activity."

Mulder was sitting on a panel with six other people. And considering the setting, he looked very uncomfortable. "All this conjecture", he began "the 'ontological shock that you speak of, for which we are so ill-equipped is, in my opinion, not only false, but dangerous. " He gestured to a screen where the image of an attractive middle-aged woman was frozen. "This woman presents no good or credible testimony beyond the feel-good message she promotes."

The gray-haired man looked skeptical. "You think she's lying?"

"No," Mulder said. "I don't think she's lying. I think that if you prepare people well enough to believe a lie, they will believe it as if it were true. And if you tell them a really big lie, like there are aliens from outer space, much more than a small one, they will believe it. And if you suggest to them that these aliens are doing bad things to them, the power of this will be to make certain people believe that certain psychopathologies and neuroses that they're suffering from can now be attributed to that."

Much like the congressman in the crowd, the people on this panel were looking at Mulder with incredulity. "Agent Mulder," a bearded man said, "she has physical ailments."

"Are you discounting _any _belief in the existence of extraterrestrials?" a woman said.

"I'm questioning mindless belief." Mulder said.

The grey-haired man said. "But you've sited evidence. You've made claims yourself!"

Mulder sounded extremely tired. "What I've seen. I've seen because I've wanted to believe." He looked towards the audience. "If you look hard, you can go mad. But if you continue to look you become liberated. And you come awake, as if from a dream, realizing that the lies are there simply to protect what they're advertising: a government which knows that its greatest strength is not in defense, but in attack."

The audience sounded dissatisfied. Mulder clearly could see, but kept pressing. "It's strongly held by believers in UFO phenomena that there is military complicity or involvement in abductions. But what if there is no complicity? What if there is simply the military seeking to develop an arsenal of weapons against which there is no defense – biological warfare – which justifies in their eyes making an ass out of the nation with stories of little green men. A conspiracy, wrapped in a plot, inside a government agenda."

If Kara had been puzzled before, she was baffled now. "Where the hell was that?"

"A panel at the Massachusetts institute where they were discussing the possibilities of UFOs and alien abductions," Cat told her. "Here's a crowd willing to believe in Santa Claus, and Mulder is telling them that it's their parents wearing padding."

Kara shook her head. "You have any idea why he said all that?"

"None," Cat admitted. "But I have to tell, what she said is a hell of a lot more plausible, even now, then any of the other stories that he floated by me five years ago. He actually sounded reasonable enough that I momentarily figured it might make sense to put him in front of a camera. One that I was willing to pay for. But I never got the chance."

"Why not?"

"Because less than twenty-four hours later, something happened that rammed the fear of God into a lot of people. And I wasn't entirely immune." She pushed another button.

For a moment, Kara had trouble processing what she was seeing. There were dozen of cars, and what appeared to be hundreds of body bags. Some of the bodies seemed horribly burned, with smoke still rising from the corpses. "Where is this? Russia? Iran?"

"Virginia." Cat said grimly. "Specifically, Skyland Mountain. The total dead were three hundred and forty six people. The bodies had been immolated, and many cases it seemed like the flesh had been cooked from the inside."

Kara had seen some horrible things in her life, but this footage quickly rocketed into the top five. "Do you have any idea who did this?"

"The only explanation that any law enforcement agency – including the Bureau – ever floated was that this was the end result of some kind of mass cult suicide." Cat paused. "The first thing that came to my mind when I got there was Oklahoma City. The second was that no human could've done this. And I may have been more right than I knew."

Something occurred to Kara. "Scully was abducted in Skyland Mountain."

Cat nodded. "I managed to get autopsy results of three of the victims. They were taken randomly, so I can't state with certainty that all of them were the same. But in all three victims, there were small pieces that looked like metal in the cervical tissues. Implants. After some more digging, I found out that they were all members of mutual UFO networks, and all claimed that they had been abducted by aliens."

Considering that she was an alien herself, this still hit Kara like a ton of bricks. "What do you think it was?"

"I can't say with certainty," Cat admitted. "But two days after this, a similar incident occurred in upstate Pennsylvania. And after doing some digging, I found out that a week earlier, something eerily similar had happened in Kazakhstan. The total body count from all three was over eleven hundred. The UN later said that incident was an example of biological warfare. No one even tried to come up with an explanation here."

Kara was now a little afraid to hear what Cat would say next. "What do you think happened?"

Cat paused. "I thought it was a preview of coming attractions. That something was coming, and that they most assuredly did not come in peace. But no one was willing to giving any kind of confirmation or denial that something was going on. And bound as I was by the ethics of my profession, I decided I couldn't risk going on camera with my suspicions. I probably saved my career and my network, but there was a very good chance I might have damned the human race as a consequence."

"You couldn't have known," Kara said.

"In a strange way, I did. This more than anything else convinced me that Mulder – at least the one who chewed Congress out a year earlier – had been right in his suspicions. But I knew that to even hint at a story this big, you had to have something resembling proof, and I still had none. And the Mulder I'd seen less than a week ago didn't sound like the man who would tell that story. So I sat on my hands, waiting for the other shoe to drop. But nothing happened – at least, not then. If nothing else, it firmed my resolved to get a network. I started working at it even harder. And by the time Congress was starting to hold impeachment hearings, I heard from Mulder again – in an even more unlikely spot."

She typed into her computer. There was a smoking building on the screen that the crawl identified as one of the Dallas Field Offices of the FBI. There was reporting that there were at least five casualties from the explosion. And there in the endless footage of helpless looking federal agents stood a weary Mulder.

"What's Mulder doing here?"

"For reason that never became clear, Mulder was being held as the scapegoat for the deaths in this building. Even though the FBI had apparently been called to a bomb threat for _the building next door, _and Mulder had led them to the right building – had literally found the bomb – they were still trying to throw him under the bus." Cat paused the footage. "Here's the kicker. At the time this was shot, the X-Files had been shut down for two months, and Mulder and Scully had been reassigned to domestic terrorism. "

"They'd gotten to close to something again," Kara guessed.

"This is one of the rare occasions I actually have some idea what might've happened, at least on the administrative level." Cat told her. "After I finally got my first affiliate in May of '99, my first major interview was with Janet Reno. It was a big get, coming after the Senate hearings, and she and I had been friendly before this. After the taping, I asked her for drinks afterward. And I was just making conversation and I asked her, if she was relieved to be dealing with trivial matters like prosecuting criminals."

"And she told me that at least this was less of a problem than the pissing matches she kept getting called into officiate between agencies. I asked her for an example, and she told me that last year, she'd been called into handle an immunity arrangement for a federal prisoner. Now, this is the kind of the thing that she has aides for, and considering the mess that Kenneth Starr was laying at her door, she didn't want to be bothered. Then she got a call from someone she would only refer to as a behind the scenes string-puller, telling her that it could help everybody if she intervened."

"Now Janet doesn't shirk from a fight, but she decided to just look at the case. Apparently, in Vancouver in a chess match between a Russian and a child prodigy, there'd been a shooting and the Russian had been killed. The investigation had been handled very bizarrely, and one of the agents had come to the conclusion that the real target had been the prodigy. The shooter claimed that he had done so under orders from a group of powerful men, and that the child had been targeted because he had the ability to read minds, and might be 'and I quote the lunatic "the next phase in human evolution" Now, she mentioned no names, obviously, but I suddenly knew that Mulder had called in the AG for an X-File."

"What did the Attorney General do?"

"She took one look at the file, and said she didn't have time to deal with this Michael Crichton bullshit," Cat told her. "Yet somehow, she found out less than three hours later, one of her aides had superseded her and authorized the deal for immunity. By the time the aide was fired, it was too late. The offer had been made. And then things _really _spun out of control. Within the next twenty-four hours, the shooter had been found murdered in his cell. The FBI security agent guarding the prodigy was shot –nearly fatally so – and the child had disappeared. None of this was, by the way, Mulder's fault but, as is the case whenever an operation like this goes balls-up, someone had to swing. And one of the agents in charge of the investigation wanted Mulder's head in a noose."

"What did any of this have to do with Reno?" Kara was still puzzled.

"She never found out. The person who should have been penalized was the aide who signed off on this. But when they came to his apartment, he had overdosed on sleeping pills and left a suicide note. This was a neat trick, considering that two of the fingers on the hand holding the vial had been broken." Cat shook her head. "Janet didn't understand any of this crap, and she was – understandably – distracted with other things. By the time she tried to launch a formal investigation, the trail had gone cold."

This was beginning to sound elaborate. Something now occurred to Kara. "Why the hell didn't they just kill him, if he was such a threat?"

"I haven't reached the end of my story. And believe me, there's a twist that Serling wouldn't have seen coming." Cat paused. "In any case, Mulder and Scully managed to weather the storm, as they always had. The last time I saw them, they seemed to be having a little more fun. She pressed one last button. "Remember COPS?"

Kara gave a small smile. "It was a guilty pleasure of my parents growing up. You're not telling me -?"

There was a small smile on Cat's face. Sure enough, in the shaky steady cam that millions of viewers had been thrilled by, were Mulder and Scully wearing FBI jackets. Mulder seemed absolutely delighted to have the cameras there. Scully kept trying to hide.

"I don't think I remember seeing this episode," Kara said.

"March of 2000. Apparently Mulder and Scully were in LA chasing down an alleged werewolf attack. "

"It wasn't there?"

"If they had actually caught one, COPS would still be on the air today." Cat smiled. "It's really not relevant what they were chasing at the time. I keep the episode on standby to see them in happier times. I have a feeling that this is what Mulder and Scully would like to remember their time as the X-Files like. In any case, that's the last of the visual aids."

"So, by the fall of 2002, I had finally acquired the building blocks of what would become Catco. I wasn't yet in a position as a media titan yet, but I was quickly mentioned in the conversation of power players. And since I could write my own ticket, I figured it was time to finally start paying back debts. I was going to give Fox Mulder a prime time interview." Now Cat seemed hesitant. "And that's when I learned that Mulder had finally entered the very X-Files he had spent a career investigating."

"What happened?"

"Even a year ago, I would've hesitated to tell anybody. But even by the standards of the new normal, this was bizarre." Cat took a deep breath. "In October of 2000, while investigating a series of abductions in Oregon, Fox Mulder disappeared. Right off the face of the earth."

It took a second for this to register. "You're saying he was abducted by aliens?"

"I'm saying it, and you're saying it. The official word on the FBI manhunt was that he was trying to find proof of aliens and got caught up with the wrong people. Something that seemed to have ended his life when he was found dead three months later in a field in New Mexico." Cat paused again. "Which no doubt came as a shock to the Bureau when he popped up in their office three months after _that."_

Kara didn't seem to follow this. "Miss Grant, in the last year, I've come to learn that being found dead doesn't mean actually dead."

"He was dead enough to bury. And to remain in his coffin, until for reasons that I've never gotten a clear explanation for, they opened his coffin, and somehow found out he was only _mostly _dead. Even the savior only needed three days to come back."

This defied even Kara's level of incredulity, and she was from another planet. "What? How? What?"

"Three excellent questions. I have no answers for them." Cat never admitted she was at a loss about anything. Firsts were happening all over the place. "All I know is that he got an even less favorable reception. Less than a month after his resurrection, the Bureau finally did what they should've done years ago, and cashiered him. I really wish that being fired from his lifetime job three months after _dying _had been the worst thing that had happened to him. But nothing ever came easy for Mulder."

At this point, nothing would surprise Kara. "What did he do now?"

"This is the vaguest part even now. In May of 2002, Fox Mulder somehow attained credentials to sneak into a Government facility in Mount Weather, Colorado. I don't know why he was there, how he got the clearance, or what he was looking for. All I know is the end result. After he was discovered, he pushed a military man named Knowle Rohrer over a balcony to his death, while trying to elude capture." Cat said. "Almost everything pertaining to that incident was heavily redacted. What wasn't was the fact that within three days, Fox Mulder was put on trial for first-degree murder."

"What kind of a trial?"

"An FBI Tribunal. Which given what we already know was no doubt a kangaroo court. Transcripts were redacted, too. But what is the fact that somehow Knowle Rohrer wasn't entirely dead either. The body they found in the morgue wasn't his. Not that it made a difference in the end."

"Wait a minute," Even Kara was having trouble. "They convicted him for killing a man he didn't actually kill?"

"Which pretty much sums up Mulder's career at the FBI perfectly. He was convicted of first-degree murder, and sentenced to death. However, there was some good news. The night before his execution, he somehow managed to escape an army facility he was being held prisoner at. Neither he or Scully was ever seen again."

Kara shook her head. "It's a hell of a story."

"Worthy of being in one of the X-Files they investigated. After they disappeared, I realized anything I said would be too little, too late. So I decided to set Mulder and Scully aside." She paused. "I think you see why I'm interested in seeing what they'd have to say now."

"Are you sure they're even still alive?"

"Around the time Supergirl surfaced, I decided to see and track them down. Then I got the first good news I'd had regarding either of them for nearly twenty years. Mulder and Scully are alive and living in Virginia."

"Why? Aren't they still the subject of an FBI manhunt?"

"Apparently, when Obama took office, the change in policy actually helped. The manhunt was called off in the February of 2009. Both of them were offered amnesty, but considering all they'd been put through, I'm not stunned that either of them took it." Cat handed Kara a piece of paper. "As you can see, Scully finally put her medical degree to good use. She's an attending at Our Lady of Sorrows in Newport News. Mulder's living in a compound in Richmond. The saddest part of a career that was filled with tragedies great and small is that after all the horrors, they're not together."

Kara's own heart was filled with dismay. "Sometimes love isn't enough."

"And maybe the two of them are as blind to their own feelings as their eyes were open to the supernatural." Cat frowned. "That is one of many questions I intend to ask them when you've done your part."

"What exactly _is _my part?" Kara asked. "Because you didn't just call me in here because you wanted me to have this story."

"I can't believe I just had you getting my coffee for a year," Cat told her admiringly. "Your sister Alex, she works for the government. I know I'm not supposed to know this, but I do. And since she is FBI-adjacent, if nothing else, she is the easiest way imaginable to get what we need to make this story work."

Kara wasn't sure whether she was being used or complimented. "I think you'd better explain."

"Mulder or Scully were right about everything. In a perfect world, they'd be the heads of the FBI by now, best working to try and protect our planet from imminent threat. Failing that, at the very least, they need to be running the X-Files. And the X-Files need to be bigger than two agents in a basement. So in order to do this, we need them to go public. And in order to that, I need confirmation."

"You don't have that?"

"I have suspicions, dates and times, and second-hand information, none of which I would let a veteran reporter go to press with, even me." Cat looked at her. "We need proof that Mulder or Scully were on to something. And the only way to prove to that is to read what's in the X-Files."


	4. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

**DOI HEADQUARTERS**

"I gotta say, I've heard a lot of strange stories over the past year," Winn said. "And James has told me more than his share. But this one, it takes the cake."

After hearing everything that Cat Grant had told her, Kara had called Alex and told her that she needed to have a private meeting at the DOI with her, Jonn, and Winn, the only ones there who knew Supergirl's true identity. Kara had managed to do a good job keeping her two lives apart the year she had been working with Alex. But the moment she heard this story, she knew that she was going to have to walk a fine line because this was something that exists within the Venn diagram of the two sides of her identity. She also had an intuition that this was going to involve a problem that, for a change, would require Kara rather than Supergirl. So while Supergirl had a meeting on the books that featured critical information about an alien invasion, it was Kara who laid out everything she had heard about Mulder, Scully and The X-Files to her friends.

"Did either of you know anything about this?" she asked Jonn and Alex. "Did the real Hank Henshaw know something like this was afloat?"\

Jonn considered this for a moment. "There's nothing in the DOI's entire database about any of this," he said slowly. "And believe me, if Henshaw had known any details about even a rumored alien invasion, he'd have an entire section of the DOI working on it."

"There any chance at all he might have been a conspirator?" Alex asked.

"Not the Hank Henshaw I've been playing for the last ten years," Jonn said assuredly. "Ironically, he'd probably be the first one to try and recruit Mulder and Scully."

Kara looked at her sister. "You get any of this when you were pretending to be working with the FBI?"

"A couple of the mouth-breathers may have mentioned them," Alex admitted. "More like a cautionary tale. Tow the Bureau line, or you'll end up in a storage closet chasing little gray men. Since I didn't bother to tell them that was what I was actually doing, I wrote them off. Now I'm beginning to wish I hadn't."

Jonn looked at Winn. "Is there anything in our database that might verify any of this?" Winn had started work on it the second Kara had come to him with the information Cat Grant had given her.

"It's a good news-bad news thing. The good news is, because Cat Grant was so meticulous in her research, I have dates and places for every event she gave us. And there is independent verification of just about everything. The Duane Barry incident, of course, is part of practice. And Scully was kidnapped by Barry, disappeared for three months afterwards, and was returned to a Georgetown hospital in November of 1994. William Mulder was murdered in May of 1995, and Melissa Scully was killed by Luis Cardinal a week later." Winn looked up. "I don't know if Miss Grant knew this, but the main reason they caught Cardinal was that less than a year later, he was caught trying to murder Walter Skinner."

"I'm guessing he didn't do a good job," Kara said.

"Shot him at point blank range, but only wounded him. They caught him two days later when he tried to finish the job. And yes, he was found dead in his cell a little after that. But not before he tried to place the blame on an accomplice, an Alex Krycek."

Kara frowned. "I don't think Miss Grant mentioned him."

"She probably didn't know about him, but his fingerprints are over a lot of suspicious activity. He and Mulder worked together during the Barry hostage crisis, but he was later suspected of murdering a tram operator near Skyland Mountain, and has connections to the diplomatic courier whose death Scully was trying to raise at the Congressional hearing before she was jailed for contempt."

"Is there any information about the rest of it?" Alex asked.

"Everything that Scully mentioned in that hearing happened. Except the rock that contained some that resembled a black-oily substance was suspected by the late Dr. Sachs of originating from Mars." Winn looked at Jonn. "There isn't chance there could be some truth to that?"

"I'd have to see the files, but my first instinct is no. The universe is a vast place. I know of a dozen planets that have had similar toxins." Jonn looked at him. "Now, I remember the mass incinerations in '98, but there's no record in our files of an aliens being on Earth at that time capable of those kinds of attacks."

"There aren't any. What we do have is the name of one of the abductees from Pennsylvania, the one who was at the conference Mulder participated in." Winn punched a few buttons. "Her name was Cassandra Spender. She was not found among the dead in Pennsylvania, but less than a year later, her body was found at the site of a similar mass incineration at El Rico Air Force Base in Maryland."

"How many dead there?" Alex asked.

"Sixty five, many of them women and children. No one even tried to link it to what had happened in Pennsylvania." Winn told them. "Now I'm the kind of person who can make these connection, but even the most foolish of men would be blind not to see a cover-up here. More proof that Mulder and Scully were right."

"All right, so what's the bad news?"

"I have been through every inch of the FBI's recorded files. There are references to Mulder and Scully in more than a few places, none of them favorable. There's the reference to them being censured by the Bureau in '98, around the time Cat Grant says they made the displeasure of the Attorney General. " Winn looked grimly. "What I can't in any database is any record of the actual X-Files. No case reports, no superior reports, not even expense reports."

Both Alex and Jonn looked hostile. "The government must have gotten to them after Mulder and Scully were drummed out of the Bureau," Alex said. "Did a full purge. Made it like they never existed."

"That certainly would make sense, but if that's the case, why are Mulder and Scully still alive?" Jonn put forth.

"Actually, Miss Grant thinks they're might be a more mundane explanation," Cat told her. "See, she hired a couple of computer experts to try and get a look at the files a couple of weeks ago, and they came up with nothing."

"You think the government may have cleaned up its tracks here?" Kara had asked.

"That is my first, and more obvious explanation," Cat told her. "But the thing is, you have to remember, this is the government. They're the last people to follow the wave of change. I know personally that the big technological upgrade that you are familiar with, didn't start until after the attacks on 9/11. I also know that Mulder and Scully were out of the Bureau by then, and while the X-Files may have been open, they sure as hell weren't getting much of a budget – and that's assuming they were getting anything during the years they were working there."

"I don't think I'm following you," Kara admitted.

"Mulder said he found the X-Files in a file cabinet in a storage closet. He also said the only he was allowed to keep investigating them was because he had allies in Congress," Cat paused. "What if they gave him just enough leeway to keep investigating, but not enough money to do much else? Now that wouldn't have deterred the Fox Mulder I knew – the guy did a lot of his files in handwritten journals. He had patience."

Kara had heard some implausible things in the last few hours, but this took the cake. "You're telling me that the information of perhaps one of the biggest conspiracies in government history could be in _a storage locker somewhere_?"

"Taking up space with the Ark of the Covenant," Cat agreed. "That does sound like the bureaucracy at work. Now, I've got some members of my legal team working on drafting a subpoena, but to be honest, I don't want to use that weapon unless I have to."

"You think they might destroy the files?"

"If they haven't already, they definitely would now."

"But if Mulder and Scully's enemies find out anybody from the press is asking questions, they might do the same thing."

"That's the real reason I want your sister to look into this." Cat told her. "Much as I want to read every word Mulder and Scully spent nearly a decade writing, it is far more important that somehow who is in the government who is trustworthy gets to those files. Even now, I can count the number of people in government I trust on one hand, and based on what happened a few months ago – the thing I'm not supposed to know about – your sister is one of those people. Mulder believed that lies couldn't survive the light of day. In that sense, he was a bit naïve. But I agree with him that the truth will out. And if we're going to go forward, we need to make sure these files come out into the light."

Alex actually needed a minute to recover from these words, even if they were delivered second hand. "I'm glad she trusts me," she told her sister honestly. "Did she have any idea where to look?"

"One person who might be able to help," Kara told her. "Mulder and Scully reported to Assistant Director Walter Skinner all the time they were at the Bureau. She made it very clear that he might have been the only ally they really had the entire time they worked there. And according to her research, while Mulder and Scully may have been thrown into exile, as of last week, Skinner was still working at the FBI."

"And according to these files, he is still there," Winn told them.

Jonn turned to Alex. "Make contact with him. Don't mention the DOI by name, but tell him that you're interested in the work Mulder and Scully have done. We'll settle just for copies of the files, even if you have to move the entire file cabinet to get them."

"What about Miss Grant?" Kara asked. "If she's right about this, she deserves the story."

"If she's right about this, she deserves a medal," Jonn said.

This was strong talk. Alex in particular was stunned. "You sure about this?"

"Agent Danvers, if even a fraction of what Mulder and Scully have been investigating is true, it means that vital intelligence to the DOI's mission statement has been withheld from us for years, maybe decades." Jonn said grimly. "And based on the bits and pieces we've gotten so far, it is deliberate malfeasance. Miss Grant has provided us a vital service. To deny her this information would be ungrateful."

"Even if she decides to go public with it?" Kara asked.

"Step by step, Kara." Jonn said. "First we need to know what were dealing with. Then we'll figure what to do next."

HOOVER BUILDING

OFFICE OF PERSONNEL MANAGEMENT

AD Walter Skinner was not your typical bureaucrat. Granted, he was balding with wire-rimmed glasses, and his hair was closer to grizzled. But his file said that he had been a man of action – he'd survived a tour in Vietnam, and he still had a military bearing – Alex recognized it even more than forty years after the fact. He had a fringe of a gray beard. And there was a look in his eyes that could only be described as haunted. Still, Alex knew she'd have to tread to carefully. Even though he'd supervised the X-Files for the entirety of their existence, that didn't me he believed in aliens himself. And after seeing his most loyal supporters – she knew that he'd nearly lost his job in 1996, and Mulder and Scully had been the only ones to back him – run out of the Bureau, and had a death sentence put on their heads, there was no particular reason for him to put his head on the chopping block.

"Why do you want to see the X-Files?" he'd demanded after hearing Alex's story.

Alex picked her words carefully. "There are people in the government who have reason believe in the validity of the Bureau's work in this field."

"Well, you're about fifteen years too late to do anybody any good," Skinner snapped. "Least of all, the people who would've been willing to help."

Alex decided to throw away the script. "Mr. Skinner, you do know what's going on in the world today? Hell, you saw what's been coming out of Metropolis the last few years."

"I don't read tabloid journalism," Skinner was practically snarling now. "And even if I did, I would believe that men from outer space necessarily come in peace."

She was going to have play a couple of other cards. "This isn't the same world it was when you started supervising the X-Files. Hell, it's not the same world it was a year ago. Now, even if you don't want to believe the evidence –"

"You know why Mulder left the Bureau?"

Alex decided to plead ignorance. "I assumed it was because he kept telling people things they didn't want to hear."

"He'd been doing that for years, and no one gave a crap." Skinner paused. "The last assignment he did as head of the X-Files, he was given reason to believe that there was a UFO in Oregon and that it was going to disappear if it wasn't recovered. He dragged my ass out there into the forest. And then, he was gone. I shouted his name into the void. And then, there was this ship. Huge, triangular, with gleaming lights all around it. It looked like it went on forever. And then it was gone." Skinner looked even more haunted. "For all the things they'd told me, for everything that had happened for seven years, I had compartmentalized and pushed down and tried to claim it was just more FBI business. I never _believed. _Until that moment."

Even though she had known of this for years, it was still startling to hear it come from the mouth of this man. "That must have been…traumatizing."

"No. It was humbling. What was traumatizing was when I went before my superiors two days later, and they basically told me that if I breathed a word of it in any official report, I would be censured, and taken off the manhunt for a missing agent." Now he looked furious. "I was prepared to torch my career. Scully had to talk me out of it. And you have no idea how difficult that must have been considering…"

He trailed off. Alex had a feeling there were decades of unsaid fury in that. "Things have changed, Mr. Skinner. You need only check the TV to see that."

"I've heard that so many times the past few years. Oh, people will believe in them, now that aliens are part of 24-hour news cycle. But why do you think Mulder hasn't popped anywhere, even to take a bow?"

It was a question that neither she nor her sister had been able to come up with a legitimate answer too. "I couldn't begin to guess."

"He knows that there are dangerous people out there, who will do anything in their power to destroy them." Skinner looked even harder now. "There were men who spent their entire lives trying to destroy Mulder, men who didn't even have names. They didn't need them to walk the corridors of power. Now they don't even have to walk them. With a few choice words tapped over a phone, they can eviscerate a person. Mulder spent a decade with a target on his back, and the only reason he and Scully don't have one now is because they've kept silent. So convince me, Miss Danvers, why you're any different."

It was pretty clear that the truth – or at least a piece of it – was the only thing that was going to get her a glimpse at the files. "I work with aliens," Alex finally said.

Skinner considered for a long moment. "I've known people who work with them," he said. "They haven't exactly been trustworthy."

"Not _for _them, Mr. Skinner. With them." She wasn't going to give up Kara or Jonn, but she could give some details. "Turns out they're like everybody else. Some of them are good. Some of them are evil. Most of them are just trying to survive in a complicate world. And its taken a huge amount of effort to convince other people that we're to be trusted because we don't automatically consider all of them threats."

Skinner's veneer of anger dissipated for a moment. "Then you know more about the threat these people pose than I ever could tell you," he said.

"That's just it. We don't. Until a colleague of ours mentioned this, we had no idea the X-Files even existed, much less that there was some kind of government conspiracy plotting to invade. When we found out what we did, we were nearly as angry as you are." Alex admitted. "I've been through some horrible things in the past couple of years. I won't say they were nearly as traumatic or as horrific as what happen to your agents, but I nearly lost my life more than once. And I have lost people I cared about."

She considered this for a moment. "I don't want to risk hurting your friends – because they clearly are your friends. But in order for us to our job – and yes, to use that hoary cliché, protect the planet – we need to know what they know. Now, its been a while, and maybe the threat has been neutralized by other forces. But if this threat has merely been lying dormant, biding its time, then my people need to know about it. And if there's anything you can do that could help us, we need to see what's in those files."

Skinner sat silent for a long time. Alex was pretty sure that he was going to refuse them anyway. "Mulder was put on trial before he was chased out of the country," he said carefully.

"I think I knew that," Alex said.

"Did you know I was his counsel?" Skinner asked. "I laid the entire conspiracy before them, knowing that they'd probably laugh me out of the courtroom. But Mulder kept hindering his own case. He refused to let witnesses who might help him testify. And he wouldn't testify in his own behalf."

"Why not?"

"He never told us what he was doing in Mount Weather in the first place. Even though it was considered one of the places where the so-called shadow government operates." Skinner frowned. "He never told us what it was he learned there. But it had to be something pretty horrific for him not to save his own life. I still have no idea what it was. But I knew that something dangerous was going to come down the pike. Maybe it already has."

He reached into his desk drawer, and took out a lockbox. "I knew that just trying to help Mulder might lead to the consequences, something that might only start with shutting the X-Files down. The day before I flew down to Colorado for his trial, I went to the basement, and made copies of every single file in Mulder's cabinet. Then I made sure they were in a secure location. The day after we came back, they shut down the X-Files and took everything out of that office. I've had this in my desk drawer ever since. I told myself I was waiting for the day Mulder and Scully came back to the Bureau. But when they were given the opportunity, they turned it down."

He opened the lockbox. In it was a small silver key. "This key opens the door to a small apartment in DC. The former tenants died in 2002, but I've kept the rent ever since. That's where the files are. They're not in an obvious place because that's not what the people there would've wanted. But if you look beyond the grassy knoll, you'll know where to find them."

Alex wasn't used to dealing in riddles, but she figured this was as much as Skinner was prepared to reveal. She held out her hand.

Skinner stopped short of putting the key in it. "I do watch the news, Miss Danvers, and I'm a smart man. I know that after this you're going to reach out to Mulder and Scully. And dedicated as they are, they'll come in out of the cold. If anything to do so much as harms a hair on their heads, I will find you and I will make you pay. I don't care what government agency you work for, what kind of skills you learned to work there, or how protected you are. I. Will. Burn You. Do we understand each other?"

Alex had faced threats from people who had destroyed entire civilizations. It said a lot that this old, balding man unnerved her a bit. Perhaps it was his utmost certainty. "Believe me, I don't leave men behind either."

Skinner put the key in her hand. "If you find the people responsible for this, no matter how harmless they look, burn them to the ground," he said intensely. "They don't deserve any mercy."

Alex hadn't needed that much help deciphering the code that Skinner had left her. He was clearly been referring to the Kennedy Assassination in his reference, and while there had been no record of Mulder and Scully in the FBI database, they had come up in a couple of other locations. The most common was a fringe conspiracy newsletter that been published from 1990 until 2001 that made multiple reference to Mulder and Scully before it had mysteriously shut down just a few weeks prior to 9/11.

The newsletter had been called _The Lone Gunmen. _And though it had stopped publishing on paper, every so often there would come a blast online using an ancient tag that almost went back to when the Internet had been part of DARPA. The signature bore a resemblance to one that one of the founding members – John Fitzgerald Byers – had used in his brief time with the DOD. Which was very odd, considering that Byers had supposedly died in an attempted terrorist attack in 2002. Then again, considering some of the things Alex had seen at the DOI, this barely registered as a blip on the weird shit-o-meter.

Winn had managed to track down the last known address The Lone Gunmen had ever used. It was little more than a rat-trap apartment in the basement of an old building. One that should have been condemned years ago, but mysterious checks kept getting paid to the landlord.

Alex made certain she could feel the outline of her gun when she rapped on the door that night. It took a long time between the knock on the door and some kind of response.

"We're paid through next month," a voice on the other end send.

"I'm trying to get in touch with the Lone Gunmen," Alex knew just how ridiculous she sounded.

"Never heard of them. Get out before I shoot you through the door." This voice was clearly female.

Alex was tempted to just kick the door down, but something told her that subtlety might be the only approach that would work here. "Walter Skinner sent me. It's about the X-Files."

There appeared to be a long whispered conversation on the other end. There was another endless pause as what seemed to be the most elaborate set of locks being opened and unhinged. Finally, the door opened a crack. An attractive, tanned brunette in her mid-thirties was looking out. Her glance was unforgiving, and she did appear to have a .22 trained on her. "Why did you go to see Skinner?" she demanded.

Alex could've kicked the door open, pulled her gun, disarmed the woman, and demanded answer in ten seconds flat. But she had a feeling that if these people really had known Mulder and Scully, the only thing that was going to get her what she wanted was the simple, unvarnished truth.

"I work for the government," she said slowly. "And apparently, our organization has been deprived of vital information by that same government that makes it impossible to do our job. The only way we can figure out what we're missing is to see what's in the X-Files."

Another endless pause. The woman closed the door. A minute later, she opened it again, this time with no gun. "Come in quickly."

Alex needed no second bidding.

"I never knew Mulder or Scully," she told her. "But the men who used to run this paper did. They were amateurs, but their hearts were in the right place, which is more than most of them are."

Alex barely heard this as she was looking around. There was a lot of tech in the apartment. She was willing to bet that none of it was government sanctioned or even remotely legal. This really didn't bother her, but she wondered just want kind of activity these people were up to.

"Are you a Man in Black?" The question came from a disheveled, looking man who seemed to be about her age, but was probably quite a bit older.

"Sort of," she admitted. "but there's no such thing as a neuralyzer. "

"The name's Bond. Jimmy Bond." The young man said this with no apparent shame or self-awareness. "I only met Scully once." He swallowed. "At the funeral."

Alex had suspected as much. "So they're dead."

"No good thing ever dies." Jimmy shook his head. "But as far as I know, the three of them are. And they wouldn't have wanted anybody to see what was in those files."

"From what I understand, they were like Mulder. They wanted the truth to come out."

"They were more concerned that these files never fall into the wrong hands," the woman said. "And so far, we're not convinced that your hands are the right ones."

"Look, miss—"

"Harlow. Yves Harlow."

"Yves," Alex said slowly. "If I was in your position, I would believe me either. I could show you my ID, but my guess is you'd think it was counterfeit, and considering that I've used more than my share of fakes, you'd be right not to trust me. But the fact is, I found this place. Now, I could have a team here in twenty minutes to tear this place until I found what I was looking for, but it would be a huge headache on both our parts, and there's a good chance I probably would still leave her with nothing. So I'm going to tell you the same thing I told Skinner. I only learned about the X-Files yesterday. Now, I'm in a very high position in the government, so you can imagine how royally pissed I was to learn that the people that are supposed to be on my side didn't bother to give me information that might have made doing my job easier, and possibly could've saved thousands, maybe millions of lives. So, it comes down to this. Mulder and Scully were right. We need their help. I was told by Skinner that the information in these files will vindicate them, and maybe help stave off an apocalypse. Maybe more than one."

Yves considered this for a few moments. Then she looked at Jimmy. "She's telling the truth."

Yves' expression didn't change. "Just before Mulder was put through that kangaroo court, Skinner came to us with copies of everything in the X-Files." She started walking to the back of the room. "His agents were old school – a lot of what they did was in handwritten articles. We're not going to give you the originals – they've been in danger before and it would be the height of foolishness to make sure they were lost. What I will give you is this."

She punched a key on a computer, and removed a flash drive. She paused for a minute. "The job you do… does it involve contact with Supergirl?"

Alex covered her shock very well. "She's a critical part of our work."

"So I imagine you're aware that there are forces in this universe that don't mean well and will destroy us without a thought? " Yves spoke casually. "And those are supposedly the good guys."

"You can't pick who your allies are." Alex said slowly

"The only reason we're giving you these files, Miss Danvers," Yves said calmly, "is because you work with Supergirl. She gets to see what's on these files. She will understand the magnitude of what's coming. Maybe she can even prevent it."

Alex's lip quirked. "Would it make you feel better if I told you that the only reason I'm here is because of Supergirl?"

Yves looked her over, then at Jimmy who nodded again. "You have twenty-four hours."

"You don't need to threaten us," Alex said. "I realize you feel it necessary, but trust me, our goal is the same."

"Protecting these files?"

"Exposing the truth to the whole world." And even though it wasn't her intended goal, at that moment Alex Danvers meant it 100 percent."


	5. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4**

It took Alex twelve hours to get back to National City. By the time she got back to DEO headquarters, they were dealing with another crisis. CADMUS had just broken the Internet by broadcasting to the entire world that aliens were a threat and that they were determined to stop them, no matter what the cost. A whole new world of headaches were about to fall on everybody, and Jonn and Alex needed to deal with it.

However, everybody who was in on this knew that what was in the X-Files was at least as important as the current crisis, maybe more so. So in order to give cover from this, Jonn gave clearance to James Olsen, who had been getting some briefings from Miss Grant as to what Catco's big story was. James had a hard time understanding, given what had just unfolding, why Miss Grant was still pushing a two decade story.

"Read what's in those files," Cat had told him, "and you'll understand."

So the three former and current Catco employees were current in Kara Danvers' apartment, trying to make sense of the flash drive Alex had come back from D.C with.

"So you're telling me that in addition to having a top secret, shadow government whose sole purpose was to stop an 'alien menace' from conquering Earth, there's also a top secret, shadow government whose sole purpose is to _help _an alien menace conquer Earth," James was holding his head in his hand. "I've heard of redundancy in government, but this takes it to a whole new level."

"I'm a visitor from another planet, and _I'm _having a hard time wrapping my head around it," Kara admitted. "You really can't tell the players without a scorecard."

"And the more I go over the files, its pretty clear that Mulder and Scully didn't even have _that," _Winn told them. All three of them were looking at computer screens to which he had downloaded the datafile. "Apparently, they spent their entire careers fighting this menace, not even knowing who they were fighting against. These guys kept a complete directory, but they clearly never even knew the names of the people who were conspiring against the government."

"Well, that's hardly their fault," Jimmy said. "Based on what I've read so far, the two of them were operating with _both _their hands tied around their backs."

According to the downloads, only forty percent of the X-Files involved alien activity at all. Kara had barely glanced through, but she wanted to go into more detail when there was time. From what she was seeing, Mulder and Scully had spent much of their career chasing what Barry Allen would have classified as 'metahumans'. From people who could squeeze into the narrowest of passage to consumer livers, to experts in mind control, to psychics, to vampires and werewolves, there was enough material there to keep the most amateurish of sci-fi writers in business for a decade.

But the alien conspiracy – that was something that was even harder to wrap her head around. Most of it was because the longer Mulder and Scully were on the X-Files, they kept getting information that would rewrite they would learn before. And for most of the files, at least in Scully's reports, she seemed to be having a hard time even considering the idea that aliens existed at all. By the last official report in the spring of 2001 – not long after Mulder's death and resurrection – she was willing to admit that there was some plan by aliens to take over the planet. But even then, they couldn't agree on who and how.

"All right," Kara said finally. "We've been through these files twice. And while I think we disagree on the specifics, I think the problem is that there are two separate, equally plausible, and not entire contradictory theories as to what Mulder and Scully thought was going. And I got to tell you, even after everything I've seen, after everything I know, they're both equally terrifying."

James nodded wearily. "Spell it out, like you would to me." He looked at Winn. "Start with the more mundane one."

"Really says something about our lives that we're calling it that," Winn swallowed. "All right. The government has been systematically abducting its citizens and making them subjects of biological experiments ever since the end of World War II. Indeed, the men performing these experiments were in fact members of the Axis, Nazi scientists that we brought over from Germany to win the space race, and Japanese scientists from units that performed the same experiments the Nazis did. We have names for many of them. These experiments were carried out in… death camps across the country, and included experimenting on lepers, exposing men and women to radiation, sterilizing women, and exposing to small pox. The test subjects would often be returned with microscopic implants in the back of their necks. It's unclear what the purpose of the chips were, but removal of them would lead to cancer."

"We have names and dates backing all of these," James said.

"And the main reason we can prove this is because Scully was the subject of this kind of testing," Winn reminded them. "Most of her medical files are her. There was some kind of branched DNA that was found when she was returned from her abduction, she nearly died from cancer after she found her implant and had it removed, and the only reason she lived was that she had a similar chip implanted before it was too late. She was also rendered barren." Winn shook his head. "Some horrible things happened to Mulder and Scully when they were working the X-Files, but this… this is the most offensive."

"I know," Kara said. "Keep going."

"The abductions took place are really the work of ultra-advanced military aircraft," Winn continued. "Subjects would be hypnotized by their captors to believe that they had been abducted and experimented on by aliens. The purpose for this was to cover up the government activities. The main purpose of which seemed to be the tagging, recording and cataloging of everybody born in America since after the second World War, with the sole purpose of building a soldier that could withstand biological attacks, something that was at the center of the military industrial complex that continued unchecked throughout the entire Cold War." He shook his head. "Oliver Stone would go apeshit if he heard this."

James took this in. "If I didn't know aliens personally, I would find this theory incredibly plausible."

"I _am _an alien," Kara told them, "and just because they exist doesn't mean it isn't. Do we have any idea from any of this who might be responsible?"

"This is the foggiest part," Winn admitted. "Mulder and Scully met a lot of people who were probably involved in this conspiracy. None of them ever had names. There are just endless amounts of sobriquets – a Well-Manicured Man, the Grey-Haired Man, the Red-Haired Man. All he could ever obtain with certainty was that they had a meeting place in Manhattan, not far from the United Nations. He had a phone number for them once; after he used it, it was disconnected. About the only thing we know with certainty is that this 'Syndicate' didn't have any female members. And I have to tell you, I think this is one club that no one should ever try to break the glass ceiling on."

"I could not agree more," Kara told him.

"All right," James turned to Kara. "Let's hear the other side of it."

"Aliens have been coming to this planet for a very long time," Kara began. "Nothing new there. What is new was that in June of 1947 at Roswell, New Mexico, an alien craft crashed. A group of men – supposedly the same Syndicate that James mentioned in the first theory – met with these aliens. And formed some kind of agreement. And you are wrong about one thing, Winn. There is one member of the Syndicate that he have a name for. "

She pressed a button, and downloaded a photograph. Two middle-aged men were argued. "The man on the left is William Mulder, Fox's father. And according to these files, he was in it from the beginning. The aliens that they came in contact with don't match up with any of the known species in the DEO database."

"And if Jonn's right about that, there's a very good reason for that," James pointed out.

"Correct. The information has always been kind of sketchy, but what he eventually learned was that these aliens had been trying to colonize galaxies, planet by planet. They would do so using a substance known as the black oil, supposedly the same kind of substance that was at the center of events Cat Grant told us about in '96." Kara looked at some more files. "The alien virus, as it was known, took over the host body and basically formed an alien consciousness, if it didn't kill the host entirely. "

"This doesn't match up with anything Supergirl knows about?" Winn asked.

"Nothing that comes to mind immediately," Kara admitted. "At least nothing that would cross the species barrier the way this substance seems to. What is clear is that both Mulder and Scully were exposed to this virus at various times. The only reason they are still alive is because both were administered a vaccine that appears to have been developed by the Russians, though how they managed to learn about this is anyone's guess."

"What was the purpose of this Syndicate?" James asked.

"To lead the way," Kara said simply. "Mulder is very clear about this. They were willing to surrender control of the Earth to these aliens in exchange for their own survival. Theirs and their families. To that end, they gave over members of the families. Which is what happened to Samantha Mulder in 1973. All of this was done so that they could make an alien-human hybrid which could survive the colonization of this planet."

"So they would save their own lives at the cost of the human race," Winn shuddered. "I feel dirty just hearing about it."

"Who were these aliens?" James asked.

"Mulder and Scully barely shared any space with them, let alone got a name and address," Kara replied. "They only were able to identify two. One Mulder keeps calling the 'Bounty Hunter'. Six and a half feet tall, built like a linebacker, face looked like it was chiseled of stone – when he saw it. Apparently, these aliens had the ability to shapeshift into anybody."

"They couldn't be Martians, could they?" Winn asked.

"Jonn's pretty sure he's the last. Anyway, the rest of the characteristics don't match. Their blood is green. Jonn's is blue. Exposure to it is toxic, causing burns to the eyes and mouth, and if not quickly treated, instant death. And apparently the only way to kill one is to pierce the back of the neck. And it has to be precise. A sniper tried to do it, and couldn't pull it off." Kara reached for a plastic bag that Alex had found. "The only certain way to do it is with one of these."

She removed what appeared to be a stiletto. She gently pressed a button, and a small needle came out with a hiss. She gave it to Winn. "Take this back when we're done."

"Mulder called them bounty hunters. What was he hunting?" James asked.

"Anything that got in the way of 'The Project'. Which could mean clones, or other aliens. Mulder was never sure, and he's maddeningly vague in some parts. Whatever it is, this Bounty Hunter looks and acts like The Terminator. Anything that gets in his way, he will eliminate it without a thought."

"Not exactly friendly, but not the worst thing I've seen in the last year," Winn said. "Honestly, I think the collaborators are worse."

"Well, if it makes you feel any better, they're all dead," Kara said. "The mass incinerations that took place in '98 seemed to be part of a resistance to eliminate the Syndicate's work. Try and bring what they did into the light. According to Mulder, they were rebels who mutilated their faces to avoid infection by the black oil. " She swallowed. "And it turns out Miss Grant was right. This was a preview. The Syndicate took these actions and decision to let colonization of this planet begin. But the rebels infiltrated their network, which is what led to the mass slaughter at Fort Rico the next year."

They took this in. "So, if this is true, our planet escaped an alien takeover, nearly a decade before Superman showed up," James said. "If the world found out about this…"

"… Cadmus would have a hell of a lot more followers," Winn finished. "I got to tell you if our choices are between being colonized or incinerated, I really want to see what's behind Door Number 3."

"And there may be one," Kara said. "In May of 1996, Mulder encountered the only alien he ever had a name for: Jeremiah Smith. Based on what little he learned, he thinks Smith may be of the same breed at the Bounty Hunter. Difference was, he wanted to do good. There was a mass shooting at a restaurant. Smith tried to talk the gunman down, and when he started firing – he healed the victims. Brought them all back from mortal injury. And all he had to do was touch them with the palm of his hand."

"That's the first good news I've heard in awhile," James said. "But since this is the X-Files, I'm guessing it doesn't have a happy ending."

"Actually, because its an X-File, the ending is ambiguous." Kara told him. "Smith was part of the conspiracy. Mulder was sure of that. Scully says he was doing data collecting for the Social Security Administration, and I doubt it was to mail checks. But at some point, he broke with them. Mulder and Smith went to Canada to get information on the conspiracy, but they were eventually stopped. Anyone want to guess as to who intervened?"

"The Bounty Hunter." Winn said.

"That's the bad news. The good news is that Smith may have been a clone. Scully found reports that six other Jeremiah Smiths also worked for Social Security, and according to this file, they were all identical. Now, there's no record of them in the files again until five years later, when Scully was searching for Mulder, and found him with a UFO cult in New Mexico. He disappeared after that, but he might still be out there."

James considered this for a moment. "All right. So what we've got is two theories. They don't conflict, but they are contradictory."

"There's another possibility." Winn said. "They're both true. Maybe the Syndicate was doing both. Maybe the first is just to cover the second. And maybe one managed to supersede the other. Maybe Scully was abducted by our government, who experimented, throughout her own, and left her for dead, while Mulder was abducted by the very aliens he spent his entire career chasing. In either case, the end result is pretty much the same. There are powers working within our government preparing to torture us. And whether its for military testing or preparation for an alien invasion, it isn't for anything good. But I know one thing for sure. It's a hell of a story."

"Hell with the story," Kara said. "If this is true – and there's way too much evidence here to just dismiss the same way the FBI did – we need Mulder and Scully on our side."

"And considering everything that's been coming out the last few years, you have to figure the world's ready for them," James told them. "When is Supergirl going to make contact?"

"She's not. At least not yet." The shock was obvious on Winn and James' faces, because Kara went on. "If there is one thing to take away from these files, it's that Mulder and Scully never trusted the government. And they had every reason not to. Now imagine what'll happen if we reveal that there is an entire government agency that's known about aliens for more than a decade, but is working in collaboration with them for 'the good of mankind'."

"It'll verify every fear they've had for nearly a quarter of a century," Winn replied.

"I never thought I'd say this, but this looks like a job for Kara Danvers," she told them.

"So how do we proceed?" James asked.

"Kara turned to Winn first. "Make another copy of the flash drive. Just the stuff pertaining to the aliens. Then get back to the DEO, start cross references anything in there that might have something to do with any of these things in the files."

"I'm on it," Winn said.

Kara turned to James. "We've got a meeting at CatCo to make."

"Sorry it took us so long to get here," Kara told Cat about an hour later.

"It's understandable," Cat said. "Considering that a sinister government agency basically broke the Internet twenty-four hours ago, I imagine that your sister's had a lot to deal with. Of course, I did have a bit of trouble explaining to my board why my second in command was incommunicado during this huge story."

James looked a little sheepish. "Don't panic, James. The harder part was persuading them that you were following a bigger story than this. They had a hard time believing me." She looked at them. "I'm hoping you didn't make a liar out of me."

"We didn't," Kara took out the flash drive.

"That have what I think it does?" Cat took like it was more valuable then the Star of India.

"Only the parts that pertain to extraterrestrial life," Kara said. "To go through it combine with every paranormal creature Mulder and Scully ended up chasing would take until the next convention."

"And probably be more exciting than covering it," Cat put it into her computer. "I'm obviously going to need to go through this line by line, but could you give me the Twitter version, if that's even possible?"

"It is." Kara looked dead at her. "Mulder and Scully were right. There has been a conspiracy going back at least since World War II to conspire with aliens to prepare for colonization of this planet. The conspirators are dead. The plan may not be."

Cat Grant took this in remarkably well. "Congratulations," she said. "This may be the first time since the Florida recount that I'm truly overwhelmed." She took a deep breath. "I imagine there are answers to most of my questions in this file, but there's one that I have to know before I open it: Why did Mulder freeze me out after May of '94?"

That had actually been the first file that Kara had gone to as soon as she'd gotten the hard drive. "Mulder had proof in his grasp of extraterrestrial life. He had found a warehouse where the government was keeping men who were breathing underwater – what he referred to as alien-human hybrids. That same day, Scully had discovered corroborative evidence of DNA that was also extraterrestrial. That's why he contacted you."

"I'm guessing he didn't have the proof for long," Cat guessed.

"Actually, it's worse than that." James had read the file, too. "The government cleaned up the evidence from the warehouse when Mulder and Scully got back. The scientist who had discovered the DNA was in a fatal car accident, along with her husband and children. Mulder thought he had caught up with a man who was one of these hybrids, but the hybrid was killed, and Mulder was abducted. " James read Cat's face. "It gets worse. Mulder's informant, a man he only knew as Deep Throat, learned of Mulder's abduction, and arranged for a trade. Something that Scully only refers to in her file as 'the wellspring'. Whatever it was, they made the deal. Deep Throat made the trade, but after they got it, he was assassinated. "

Cat took this all in. "That stupid, chivalrous fool," she whispered. "I'm guessing after all that, he figured _they _– whoever they were – wouldn't blink an eye at killing a relatively neophyte journalist."

"They might not be thwarted by killing a media mogul, either," Kara quickly read Cat's reaction. "Miss Grant, you can read the files for yourself, but there is an enormous body count of people who helped Mulder and Scully over the years. Fellow agents, secretive informants, local law enforcement, witnesses – I actually lost count by the time I was finished. If the people who Mulder and Scully kept pissing off over the years find out you _even _have these files…"

"You don't honestly expect me to drop this, do you?" Cat Grant asked.

"Of course not." Kara knew better than anyone that Cat Grant would never let a minor story go, much less something as huge as this. "But you need to be aware of what you're facing. You were right to keep this circle small, and I'm certain that if anything were to happen to you, we would be damn sure that all of this saw the light of day. All I'm saying is…"She picked her next words carefully. "There are a lot of people who don't want this information to be made public. And Supergirl can't be everywhere at once."

Cat Grant seriously considered this for several moments. "When you brought this your sister, I assume she passed this information along to Supergirl?" she said slowly.

Kara knew she was treading on shaky ground. Less than six months ago, Cat Grant had figured out her dual identity. The fact that Jonn had managed to bail her out didn't change the fact that Grant was a very cagey person, and probably knew that there might be another explanation. (If she didn't now, the fact that the flash drive would confirm that there were shape-shifting aliens would definitely give her a huge hint). Nevertheless, she couldn't exactly dodge the question. "She found out," Kara said slowly.

"What did she have to say?"

"It was the first time in a long time that I've seen Supergirl surprised," Kara said honestly. "I'm really not sure which stunned her more: that there had been aliens trying to take over this planet decades before Superman arrived, that their were people willing enough to sell the planet to them, or just how dark the human soul could be. You read those files, I guarantee you whatever faith you have in the human race will seriously be depleted."

"It's never really been that great to begin with," Cat admitted. "Did she recognize any of the aliens involved?"

"No. But it's a big universe, and she hasn't been everywhere." Kara then decided to go all in. "She knows she can't stop this threat without information. And even after going through those files, its clear that Mulder and Scully didn't know a lot, either. Almost everything they saw came after the fact. For that matter, now that she's part of the daily conversation, she's a little stunned that Mulder didn't come out of the shadows himself before this. All she knows is that, like the rest of us, she needs more information. And that means that, at the very least, the X-Files need to be reopened."

"I'm a little surprised she wouldn't want to have a sitdown with them herself," Cat told her.

"You need to read those files," Kara said hurriedly. "All indications are their close encounters were anything but friendly. And that was before Mulder was taken by them."

Cat actually leaned forward at this. "So its true? Mulder was abducted by aliens?"

James spoke about this. "When Alex asked him, Walter Skinner confirmed it. He saw it with his own eyes."

Cat Grant considered this for a moment, then got to her feet. "James, I'm going to need you to cover for me for the next three days. Keep on top of the Cadmus story. Have our tech people start going through it frame by frame. I swear that voice sounded familiar."

There was a story all its own in that, but James just nodded. Cat looked at Kara. "How quickly can you get home and pack a suitcase?"

That was a loaded question if ever there was one. "Half an hour," she said carefully.

'That's actually quicker than I needed, " Cat admitted. "It's going to take at least an hour to get to Catco jet fueled, and for me to get everything ready. All right, go home, pack a bag, and start reviewing the files yourself. I'll send a car for you in ninety minutes."

Warning bells were starting to go off in Kara's head. She was invested in this story now, and Supergirl needed to know this information from Mulder and Scully's lips. But considering that a major threat had just been announced to the world, she couldn't exactly disappear for three days either. Of course, Supergirl could multitask just fine, but it was going to pretty difficult if any problems came up when they were in the air.

"I realize this is a big story, but why the extra urgency?" she said carefully.

"Rules of journalism," Cat told her. "We can't run this story unless we have two confirmations of the events. Skinner just gave us the first. When Scully confirms what happened to her partner, we'll be able to go to press."

"Miss Grant, I know what a big deal this is," James interrupted. "But Fox Mulder's spent more than a decade in hiding. He's got to be doing it for a reason."

"And I have no intention of exposing him to the world unless he absolutely agrees to it," Cat told him with a trace of her trademark acerbity. "But the world needs the X-Files reopened more than anything right now. And the only way to do that is by putting a lot of pressure on the powers that be."

"And the threat of your entire empire rolling out all the dirty secrets the government's been keeping on aliens for the past seventy years is the best way to do it," Kara said slowly.

"Congratulations, Danvers. You're starting to think like a real journalist," Cat said. Then she frowned. "No one outside about the three of us, Supergirl and James know about what were doing, do they?"

"Alex had to let in a few people to get clearance, but they're all our people," Kara assured her.

"Good. Keep it that way. "Cat looked at James. "Not a word of this to the board until I tell you to. The fewer people who know about what were doing, the better. " She looked at Kara. "And tell your sister I said thank you."

Kara thought for a moment. Something had just occurred to her. "Can you pick me up in two hours?" she asked.

"Why?"

"I need to talk with someone else. Who might know one more piece of the puzzle."

Clark Kent frowned. "None of this rings any obvious bells, but Jor-El always kept more secrets than I did."

Kara had met up with her cousin, and told her that Clark and her had to have lunch in Metropolis, because that would probably cause less of a panic than Superman and Supergirl being seen anywhere.

"I assume your family was just as reluctant to share,' he said wryly.

"My mother and I haven't exactly been on speaking terms for a bit," Kara said slowly. She still went to her palace every so often, but she hadn't trusted her mother that much ever since the rest of her family had shown up last year. "I did some checking, but she was as vague as always.

'Well, just because she hadn't heard of this particular brand of aliens doesn't mean they aren't out there," Clark reminded her. "It's a hell of a big universe."

Kara raised an eyebrow. "If a species was planning to conquer the universe planet by planet, and Earth happened to be on the interplanetary Zagat's Guide, you think either of our parents might have pointed that out?"

"Your mother might. My father was always something of a douche. "Clark had always been pissed at the secrets he had found at the Fortress of Solitude.

"True enough," she admitted. "What about the other side of it? You ever hear of the X-Files?"

"Actually, I may have." Clark told him. "Around four years ago, I was doing a series of end of the world cults, and I was talking to an FBI agent who'd been handed was generally considering a junk assignment. He thought it was trash, because he'd investigated a couple of these cults, and they were more serious how they approached things. Also said Armageddon might be closer than we thought. When I asked him why, he said he'd once worked for a department that looked into these things."

"What was his name?"

"John Doggett. Said he'd always been a meat and potatoes kind of guy, but a decade earlier, he'd seen some things that really changed how he saw the world."

The name meant something to Kara. "Doggett. He was the guy who led the FBI manhunt to find Mulder. Then he ended up running the X-Files when Mulder and Scully were run out of the Bureau."

"Guy had a solid resume. Ex-Marine, Former NYPD. Was at point considered to be on the path to the Director's chair. Then after he took on the hunt for Mulder, his career when straight down the crapper." Clark paused. "He also said he didn't regret it for a minute."

Kara had read Doggett's entries into the X-Files. He'd worked for about two years in the department – first with Scully, and then an agent Monica Reyes – and while his reports seemed credible, she hadn't entirely bought into the lines about the conspiracy. He kept coming back to the word – supersoldier – which he repeatedly used instead of 'alien' that she'd thought he was afraid to say the word. At the conference earlier, none of them had quite been sure how or even if this was part of the same conspiracy, mainly because it had only started showing up after the original conspirators were all either dead or gone. They'd decoded to leave it out of the initial group of files that they gave to Cat Grant, and let her decide what to make of them after they gave her the rest.

"Do you think you can track down this John Doggett?" Kara asked.

Clark smiled. "Before or after I cover for you at National City."

Kara had the good grace to flush a little. That was the other reason she'd asked to meet with her cousin. In order to cover for her absence at the DEO, not to mention any other rise in crime that might happen in her absence, she'd asked for Superman to watch the city for the next three days.

"You're older than me and you've been doing this longer," she reminded him. "You're better at multitasking than I am."

"I just wanted you to know how hard it's going to be." Kara fixed him with a look. "Relatively speaking, of course."

"I'll do some checking when I'm in the air. See if I can find if Doggett's still with the Bureau. Reyes, too." Kara told him. "Consider it the first of many professional courtesies."

"Journalist to Journalist, or superhero to superhero?"

"The former. You're helping me with the latter, remember?" Kara teased.

Clark's smile faded. "We may be in for a whole new mess when this all comes to the surface," he told her seriously.

"We already are," Kara admitted. "What matters right now is trying to stop it from getting any bigger."


	6. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5**

**WASHINGTON D.C.**

There were days when Dana Scully wished she was ten years younger. It wasn't so much that she was coming off an twenty hour shift at the hospital, or that they'd had a multi-car pileup on the expressway in which she'd nearly lost count of the number of people she'd had to pronounce. She was one of the few doctors who'd actually seen far worse things before she had started taking shifts at the ER.

No, what bothered her was that every ten minutes she'd had to pull some idiot intern away from their electronics, so that they could help with the current crisis. She knew that so many of the iPhone generation had the attention span of a wingnut, but the fact that all of them kept saying "But the government knows about aliens" really stuck in her craw. And she said that knowing that the 'craw' didn't exist.

None of the interns knew of her previous life. And even though she was one of the most stoic and even tempered people, with each complaint, it took more and more of her remarkable self-restraint not to yell out: "Of course the government knew! They've known for decades. They took my ovaries because of it!" But that had been a lifetime ago. That was why she was here.

It would've been so easy to go back to the Bureau seven years ago. Their sins had been forgiven. And within a month of returning from their tropical island vacation, the first reports had started to come out of Metropolis of a man who was flying around claiming to stand for all the values she had joined the FBI to uphold.

When the confirmation had come, Scully had wondered what Mulder would say now that his life's work had just been validated by Anderson Cooper.

"That guy must be from another planet," he had finally said.

"What makes you so sure?"

"No one on Earth could be that naïve."

When the Bureau had come back with a job offer, Mulder had done exactly what he had spent his entire career at the Bureau doing – he pissed everybody off. "You're twenty years and at least one alien invasion too late," he had told Skinner. "You don't want my help. You want me to clean up your mess. I got sick of doing that years ago, and I'm sure as hell not going to do it now."

Scully was certain the next thing he was going to do was call the media. He was sure that all the Bureau muckity-mucks were equally terrified of the same thing. Instead, he'd gone back to his compound, cleaned it out, and disappeared again.

Scully could've accepted the job – hell, she'd run the X-Files without Mulder before. But the memories of William had been made raw by the last case, and she didn't want to make this journey again. So she went back to medicine, and tried to shut her eyes to everything that was going on. She held her breath on December 22, 2012, but nothing happened.

Even as more and more events pertaining to the paranormal became part of everyday life – hell, Sanjay Gupta now had a show where he dealt with the science behind these things – Scully kept expecting Mulder to at least make some kind of commentary, even if it was on a damn cable access show. But he never did, and his calls with Scully became less and less frequent. Something had broken in the man she had once loved. It was as if finally having his life's work validated had broken something in him, and now he thought it was too late to find anything else. Or maybe now that it no longer seemed to matter about secrecy, he was angry that he has lost the son he had never gotten a chance to love.

Reluctantly, Scully had done the only thing she could. She had moved on. She had left oncology for trauma services, where the patient casualty rate wasn't nearly as high, and she could actually see that she was making a difference in the world. But now that nobody in the world was laughing at what she had spent a decade of her life pleading to deaf ears about, now that her life's work was part of Jimmy Fallon's monologue, she couldn't deny that there was a part of it that hurt.

"Dr. Scully?"

The voice that was speaking was strange – it was no one she knew, and yet it sounded familiar all the same. She turned around, and for the briefest of moments, she nearly stumbled.

"It's kind of offensive. You're my age, and you still look better than me."

What do you say when the most famous woman in media says something that casual to you? And what do you say when it's someone you met for the briefest of moments more than twenty years ago, when both of your careers were about to go in vastly different directions?

"I'd say you'd still probably have a more active social life than I do," Scully said.

Catherine Grant looked at her. "That's a fair point. When both Andrew Cuomo and Antonio Banderas have your number on speed dial, I guess you can say you've been in the right circles. Of course, you probably have at least one advantage over me there."

"I find it hard to believe," Scully found herself saying.

"I've never found my soul mate. You did."

How do you react when a woman who's made Presidents weep says she envies you? In Scully's case, she changed the subject. "I'd ask what you were doing here, and how you found me, but I have a pretty good idea."

"I'm a little relieved," Grant said. "Considering that you actually have me at an advantage, I'd honestly expected you'd have made me grovel a little."

"I've never been that kind of person," Scully said. "Besides, considering that Mulder has gone out of his way over the last twenty years to never even mention your name – and considering what you managed to achieve in that time, that's remarkable – I honestly thought you'd have forgotten us."

"You never forget your first whistleblower," Grant told her. "And considering you had a bigger story than Wigand and Snowden combined, and I sat on it for a quarter of a century, I'd say the debt is far greater on my side of the ledger."

She'd been out of the government for more than a decade, but the habits of the FBI – and more importantly, working on the X-Files – were returning to Scully. In a sense, they'd never went away. "Before we go any further, I'd suggest we talk somewhere private."

"I couldn't agree more." She reached for her phone, and pressed a button.

A modest blue Mercury pulled up. It was a fancy car, but far below what Grant could afford. "What, no limo?" Scully said, only half in jest.

"It's still at the hotel," Cat said seriously. "Enterprise rental. I paid in cash."

Scully had spent decades maintaining a stoic façade, but some of her incredulity must've showed.

"What can I say?" Cat Grant said. "I guess knowing Mulder has rubbed off on me, too."

Cat told Kara to drive for the next ten minutes until they were in a secluded zone.

Scully decided that she had to let Cat know one of her darker secrets. "The year before I left the Bureau, I received a call from a man who gave some of the most elaborate directions to elude surveillance I'd ever heard of. It reached the point of lunacy. So I told him that we were in the middle of nowhere. He told me there is no middle of nowhere anymore."

"That was when, 2002?" Cat told her. Scully nodded. "Probably more true now."

Now was not the time to let her know the man had been an alien assassin –though considering who she was talking too, it probably wouldn't have hurt her credulity. So Scully asked a more pertinent question. "What's this really about?"

"Restitution," Cat Grant said simply. "You and Mulder were right. About everything. Aliens have been coming to Earth for a very long time. They don't come in peace. And there are people within our government who are working with them for reasons that have nothing to do with the betterment of mankind."

To hear the woman who had called Medvedev 'a Russian poodle' mention all of this with the casualness of placing an order for breakfast was rather unsettling, even if it was a public vindication of everything she had worked for. "You're a little late to the party," Scully told her.

"I tried reaching out earlier," Catherine admitted. "But when I heard what had happened to you and Mulder, the last thing I wanted to do was to get you killed. I spent a substantial amount of money trying to track you down for a year before I realized I might lead the government right to you."

That actually was a shock. "When was this?"

"2004. I still wasn't convinced aliens existed, but I did know an injustice when I heard one. And you and Mulder deserved a real day in court."

Scully had never even considered reaching out to the media, even in their darkest hour. At the time of Mulder's arrest and trial, Catco was making its first entrance into Forbes. Why hadn't she tried to reach out to the press? God knows she would've gotten a fairer hearing that she'd have ever gotten from Kersh. It wasn't like they'd had anything left to lose by then.

"I've had a lot to deal with over the past several years," Catherine told her. "But I would be lying if I didn't say that your story has haunted me more than all the others I've gotten. And now, considering that the planet is now under siege, I'd say we need you now more than ever."

Scully hesitated. "Pull over, and then get in the back seat," she told the driver.

There was a moment of a hesitation, then Grant nodded.

Cat wisely stayed silent until Kara finished doing what she'd been told. "I'd say this is paranoid, but then I'd be forgetting who you worked with."

Within half a minute, the driver was there. "Would you mind turning around?"

It was hardly the strangest request Kara had heard, so she remained silent even as Dana Scully spent the next ten second apparently studying the back of her neck.

"I realize the circumstances, but I trust Kara Danvers implicitly," Cat tried to assure her. "The only reason she came with me to DC in the first place is because I told her what the X-Files were and why they were so important."

Scully paused. "You know why Mulder left the FBI?" she asked.

"He was abducted by aliens. Who left him for dead. And somehow he managed to come out of his coffin three months later."

Even given everything that had happened, it was still kind of shocking to hear it said by the voice of Catco. "The man who led the 'manhunt' for Mulder was named John Doggett. Despite everything that happened, I came to trust him implicitly. Doggett had a colleague who fed him information. A man he had known since the First Gulf War. A good friend, I think." She paused. "The man's name was Knowle Rohrer. He was the man Mulder was accused of murdering."

"That was in the file," Cat admitted.

"Did the file also say that Knowle Rohrer was an alien who had been killed three times before it finally stuck?"

If Kara Danvers had not spent a lifetime guarding her secret identity, she probably would have trembled a little at this.

"I can assure you, Dana, Kara is as human as I am."

Cat's statement just made Kara feel guiltier.

Scully's eyes narrowed. "How did you know this much?"

"I've been in contact with Walter Skinner," Cat said quietly. "I tried to get in touch with him repeatedly over the years. But he's been adamant in not telling me anything about where you were. You left quite the impression on him."

"Collectively, the two of us probably added ten years to his life," Scully said guiltily. "He always felt that he never did enough to protect us. So how did you find me now?"

"I'm the head of a multi-billion dollar corporation, and as you've so readily admitted, there's no such thing as the middle of nowhere anymore," Cat Grant allowed the tiniest bit of pride into her voice. "I'm sorry I just snuck up on you like I did, but honestly I figured it would be easier if I showed up on your front door rather than force you to come to me."

"So why come to me first instead of Mulder?" Scully asked.

"Maybe because you can answer the question that I can't," Cat admitted. "You've seen what's in the news today. Hell, over the past year I've devoted more time to Supergirl than the Republican primaries. Aliens are coming out of the woodwork – hell, for all I know, maybe that's where some of them are actually hiding these days. Mulder would be well within his rights to be making a comfortable living telling everybody the government has no idea what its doing with its policy about aliens, and that he should know, he used to work for them. Hell, I'm pretty sure that's how Pat Buchanan began his as a pundit. So can you tell me please, why Mulder hasn't even done so much as a curtain call?"

It was a question that Scully had been pondering for the last few years. "Mulder has always been really contrarian," she began slowly. "Funny story, the first time I really began to believe that aliens might exist, he was going through a phase where he was just as convinced they were part of a coverup."

"I know." Cat admitted. "I saw the seminar. If he'd stuck to that line of questioning, I could've put him on the air right then. Of course, it didn't help matters that we very nearly got invaded right then."

Scully couldn't help it; she did a double take. "How…"

"I was at Skyland Mountain in '98. I honestly don't know how we missed each other." Cat said grimly. "Maybe if we had talked, history might have been forever altered. But since we're here now, maybe you can tell me. How close did we come to being colonized?"

Scully tried to read something that was a trap in that voice, anything that might have been gotcha journalism. But Cat Grant didn't believe in that kind of reporting. She'd spent her entire career railing against it. So she gave an honest answer – one that she hadn't been willing to admit to herself back then.

"I think it was a matter of minutes." She paused. "And I need this to be crystal clear. The fact it didn't happen was _despite _our efforts, not because of them."

Cat Grant didn't speak for a full ninety seconds. For someone who had always believed in always talking, it was practically a lifetime. "Are they still out there?" she finally asked.

There was no real way to answer that question. So Scully gave the only answer she could. "The men who were responsible for this conspiracy – the ones who started it all – are all dead. But you're a smart woman, Catherine. You know that it is very possible for a conspiracy to go on well beyond the lifetime of the original conspirators. The date may have passed. But that doesn't mean it won't happen."

Cat knew just how hard it was for Scully to admit that. "We're in danger, Dana," she said slowly. "You don't even have to watch my network to know that. The good news I happen to know people who have been working to try and stop the threats that are on their way. The bad news is they didn't even have a hint about anything that was in the X-Files."

Cat Grant was dropping bombshell after bombshell. "Do you want to put us on the air?" Scully asked. "I hope to God you didn't come all this way just for that."

Cat actually looked a little hurt at this. Then she appeared self-conscious. "This is a big story, I'm not going to deny that," she admitted. "But I'm smart enough to know that we're in a situation far worse than that. Right now, we need as many good people as possible in government trying to deal with whatever threats there are. We need the X-Files reopened. And we need you and Mulder to be working on them again."

Cat actually sounded like she was pleading a little. Scully was willing to bet that Catherine Grant had never begged for anything in her entire life. "The Bureau offered before. Mulder told them to go to hell. Don't ask me why."

"Do you know where he is?" Kara knew she was out of place asking this question, but she'd read half the files on the trip to D.C. And if Cat Grant wasn't prepared to beg, Supergirl was prepared to get on her knees – feminism be damned.

Scully considered her for the first time. "Cat's told you everything?"

"No, but I know a lot." Kara said honestly. "I've lived in National City for the past three years. I've witnessed some truly horrific things. And believe me when I tell you, there are some problems that I don't think even Supergirl can solve alone."

Scully looked at her. "Mulder's been very reclusive the last year or so," she finally said. "I don't know why he doesn't want to let the truth be known anymore. All the years we were on the run, he kept trying in his own way to let the truth come out. But, it's like he's stopped caring the past few years. And I just can't figure out why." She looked at Catherine. "I assume you know how to find him."

"I wanted to reach out to you first," Cat paused sheepishly. "You were always the more rational one."

Even talking to Cat Grant seemed like a betrayal somehow. But Kara was right. The world needed heroes right now. And they didn't all wear capes or masks. Indeed, it needed more who came out in the light.

"All right," she told them. "But I have to warn both of you. Be prepared for disappointment."

RICHMOND, VIRGINIA

_Less than thirty-six hours ago, the world's media was flooded with the images of an organization revealing itself only as Cadmus. It claimed the world was under the threat of extra-terrestrial life, that it was up to the world to unite against it, and that it would lead the way in doing so. Are they the residual of the Syndicate? An off-shoot of the resistance? Or just another Kanye hoax?_

_When I began the search for the truth a quarter of a century ago, even I could not imagine a day when alien invasions are just considered another part of a campaign platform, when men and women in costume are considered less significant than a Taylor Swift album, where the apocalypse is now considered part of the Homeland Security threat._

_Oscar Wilde once said that the two worst things in the world are not getting what you want and getting it. Having experienced both, I now find myself longing for the days when the truth was considered something valuable, not just a media talking point._

_The date has passed, the Syndicate is dead. And now aliens walk the street openly. So why do I feel the universe is an even smaller place than it was before? Is there anything I can do to help it? And even if I could, does it even matter anymore?_

Fox Mulder looked at his journal – the latest in a seemingly endless series that he'd been keeping since he'd discovered the X-Files. All these years, even the better part of a decade that he'd spent on the run, he'd kept detailed accounts of the paranormal, including some details that he'd shared in Bureau reports, and in some cases, even from Scully. He'd never thought he was much of a writer – so much of the earnest prose he'd written sounded hackneyed and purple even then – but he'd always felt that someone needed to keep a record of the truth.

Mulder was tired. And he had no reason to be. He hadn't had a job in nearly fifteen years, he hadn't had to keep on the run for more than seven, but somehow he just felt more exhausted than he ever had. Maybe it had been part of being sentenced to death, maybe it was part of being _actually _dead – for a while, at least. Maybe the real reason was, he didn't feel like he had a purpose any more. And that did cause him to ache.

Even at his lowest moments twenty years ago – when he had been told my Michael Kritschgau that extraterrestrial life was all nothing but a cover-up – he'd still managed to get out of bed each morning to try and bring this truth to the public, and if h, and, if he was being completely honest within himself, for Scully. Now, the truth was just a five-letter word, and Scully –

Oh, he still heard from her every day – even though they were years past it, it was clear she still loved him, but ever since they had gotten back to civilization, Mulder seemed more inclined to keep pulling away from her. Was it simply the problems of being too old? Not having a job? Or was it because of –

He tried to kill thoughts of William. The son he'd only held once, the son who was forever beyond his reach. But the fact remained, he did blame Scully. He'd never told her, of course, but in the way that they'd always seemed able to read each other minds, maybe she'd sensed it. And the truth it was, it did keep him up at night.

Why in the world had she chosen to believe Jeffrey Spender? If his father had said the exact same thing to her, she would have told him to go to hell and redoubled her efforts to protect William. So what had convinced her that sending their son to _strangers _would somehow keep him safe from a conspiracy that continued to have its tentacles in everything? Did he blame her? Or was it his own guilt that if he'd been available, she would've had the courage to shoulder on?

For that matter, why hadn't they even tried to find William the five years they'd been on the run? They'd made excuses – what kind of life or protection could they possibly offer a child now that they were under sentence of death – but it had been another lie they'd told themselves. What kind of world would they be bringing him up him? And what kind of world could he live in now?

There was a buzz at the intercom. With that kind of telepathy they'd always had, he knew who it was even before she spoke.

"Mulder, it's me."

How many times in all those years had those three simple words lightened his heart, even on the shittiest of days? Even now, after all his internal rants and raves, he still wanted to see her. "Why so formal?" he asked.

There was a pause. "Because I have guests."

"Scully, I don't know who you think I'd want to see beside you, but I can tell you no."

"One of them is Catherine Grant."

And for the first time in a long time, Mulder was at a loss for words.

Had he known, at their initial meeting, that he was about to start a partnership with one of the most powerful people in media today? He was smart, but not that much of a seer. At best, he'd thought she might end up being the next Diane Sawyer, not the female equivalent of Ted Turner – a comparison that Grant went out of her way to scorn every time it had been brought up.

Mulder knew that there had been a dozen occasions in his years on the X-Files, especially when his leads in Congress had shriveled up and died, where it might have been better to turn to the press. But for all his anti-establishment ideals, there'd always been some part of him that had viewed the press as dangerous. And if he were honest, he was relatively certain that if he'd turned to anyone in the media, they would ended up as just another journalist who chased the wrong story.

"Mulder?"

Well, she was here now. And there was only one thing to do.

"Give me a minute. The place is a mess."

If Mulder really had stalled to try and straightened up a little, he had done a half-assed job. There were papers everywhere, and what furniture he seemed to have was barely straightened out. Maybe Mulder didn't feel like he had to make things neat even for media moguls. Or maybe he just felt that he had reached the point in his life that he didn't have to go through even the appearance of social niceties.

"I'm sorry I kept you waiting. I'm not used to having guests any more."

Kara's firs t impression of Fox Mulder was that he had, like Scully, aged particularly well. There was the odd fleck of gray in his hair, and there were a few crevices in his face, but he didn't look much different than the man she had seen in that twenty year old footage a few days ago. And apparently when he'd said the place was a mess, he had taken the five minutes to deal with himself, because Kara seriously doubted he was the kind of man who lounged around in a button-down shirt and tie these days. He must've turned heads when he was in his prime, and she could definitely see why women like Scully would still be attracted to him.

Cat clearly realized this to. "You didn't have to dress up for me. I stayed at the Unibomber's shack for a day." She looked around. "I'm pretty sure it was neater than this."

"Well, Ted always had a stronger work ethic than I did," Mulder said dryly.

"I'm willing to bet your manifesto would make far more interesting reading," Cat fired back. "I'm sorry I haven't stayed in touch."

"I was pretty clear when I talked to you that last time in my instructions," Mulder told her. "I was just surprised you listened to them."

"I was young, and impressionable." Cat told him. "I've been far more risk averse since then."

"You must be. Otherwise you wouldn't have come here." Mulder raised an eyebrow. "Why did you come here?"

"She wanted to apologize, and offer her help." Scully told him. "And since I haven't exactly been able to persuade you, I figured you might listen to her."

The fun left Mulder's tone. "Squalor aside, would you all sit down?" He looked right at her. "I don't believe I caught your name."

"It's Kara Danvers. " She hesitated. "Miss Grant trusted me enough to share your story with me. It's a honor to meet you."

"You might not feel the same way when we're finished talking," Mulder waited until they had all sat down. "Okay, Catherine, its been awhile since I had to actually work the little gray cells, but I think I know why you're all here. You know about the work Scully and I did on the X-Files about metahumans and alien invasions. You think somehow that my lifetime of work that was basically disregarded as bunk when I was doing now would have some value to the right people. So you've brought your junior reporter from National City to ask if I would be willing to give you an exclusive."

"That's true as far as it goes," Cat told her. "I have enough stories about what's happened at home to keep the twenty-four hour newscycle churning for quite some times. What I want to do is help you get back to work at the FBI. Doing what the world needs you to be doing. I'm kind of surprised you haven't been pushing to do it yourself."

Mulder laid back, and instead directed a question at Kara. "When you were growing up, I take it you saw _An Inconvenient Truth?"_

That seemed like another non sequitur, but Kara nodded.

"Everybody did. Al Gore spent ninety minutes telling everybody exactly what we had to hear. Global warming was real, it was destroying the planet, and if we didn't do something within the next ten years, we were going to pass an ecological tipping point." Mulder looked at her. "What exactly did we do?"

Kara was at a loss for words. "Um, I uh-"

"Exactly. We collectively did nothing. Oh we gave Al an Oscar and the Nobel Peace Prize, and we all congratulated ourselves, but its been ten years, and all we've done in the interim is congratulate ourselves for recycling." Mulder looked at Cat. "I wish I could say I was shocked, but as someone who spent the better part of a decade trying to do the same thing he did, and getting laughed out of every place I lived, I learned my own truth."

Cat Grant clearly hadn't expected that. "What is that?"

"Knowing the truth is useless unless there are people who are willing to help you. And I learned a lot about people in my time at the Bureau. I used to think that given the choice between doing the easy thing or the right thing, people would always do the easier thing. Turns out I was wrong about that. People will wait for somebody _else _to do the right thing. Or at least, what they consider the right thing"

A nasty put was beginning to form in Kara's stomach. Cat Grant either didn't see it or was continuing the play devil's advocate. "I'm not sure I follow."

"Lex Luthor was an insane psychopath. I'm not going to deny that for a second," Mulder told her. "But in his egomaniacal way, he had a point. If we rely on people in costumes to solve all of the big problems that we have, we're not going to concentrate on the smaller ones that lead to the bigger ones. And if we don't do that, we're susceptible to the ravings of a Luthor."

"Wait a minute." Cat was now starting to get worked up. "You're not suggesting that Supergirl is evil?"

"I didn't say that." Mulder held up a hand. "But I do think, in her own way, she is terribly misguided."

"You've been living in this compound for the last seven years. I've had a front row seat to all the good work she's done for the last year. What makes you think you know better than me?"

Mulder's next words were more frightening than kryptonite.

"Because you don't know who she is. I do."


	7. Chapter 6

**Chapter 6**

This was impossible. There was no way in the world that a man who Kara hadn't known existed a week earlier somehow knew her alter ago.

Cat Grant was clearly stunned, but she held her feelings in check. "You know who Supergirl is?" Mulder nodded. "Well, forgive me for asking, but why haven't you told anybody?"

"I said I knew who she was. I didn't say I knew her name."

Cat was clearly as baffled as Kara was, but Scully, who came from the same world of Mulder, understood what he was talking about. "Are you saying that you profiled Supergirl?"

"And Superman. And all the other costumed heroes that have emerged over the past few years." Mulder reached under his table, and brought out a stack of blue files. "It wasn't exactly a picnic. That guy up in Gotham who dresses like a bat – that was a fun four months."

Cat recovered. "Who exactly have you been making these profiles for?" she asked.

"No law enforcement agency wants anything to do with me," Mulder told them. "And I have no intention of helping criminals go up to the doors of these vigilantes with an AK-47."

"So who are you making them for?" Cat repeated.

Mulder smiled. "Come on, Catherine. You came all this way to try and get me to come back to my old job. Don't you at least want to hear what I've been working on all this time? Make sure I'm not ready for the white coats at Arkham?"

It was clear from Cat's expression that she was starting to consider that possibility rather seriously right now. Had Mulder really gone over the edge? It had been known to happen to more than a couple of profilers. "Well, I've heard some stranger stories the last couple of months, "she finally said. "Okay, this should be good for a laugh, if nothing else."

Mulder took out a folder. "Supergirl is a white female, early to mid-twenties. She wears a costume, but not a mask, which means her real identity, is so inconspicuous as to be invisible in the real world. She works at a menial job at a large business. Her adopted family was a fairly loving one, but there was clearly a major trauma at some point in her adolescence. Probably the loss of a parent. In order to make sure that she didn't stand out growing up, she maintained lower grades than her intellect would reveal. And she most likely was attending an average college rather than a better one. She listens more than she speaks, better than to risk giving anything. She hasn't had a serious romantic relationship, partially because of fear of her physical abilities, mostly because she's afraid of getting close to people who might reveal her secret."

It was taking a level of inner fortitude that Kara didn't think she possessed too remain absolutely poker-faced during all this. She'd read Mulder's file. She knew he was one of the best profilers Quantico had produced, and no doubt one of the best interrogators the Bureau had ever had. All of this was being discussed in the most generic of terms. There was no way he could know that he was actually in the room with the subject of his profile. None. Right?

"She didn't want to reveal herself in public, so the only reason she's emerged in the last year was because someone she cared about closely was in danger, and she reacted. Afterwards, she's tried to balance her two identities, which means she's very capable at multi-tasking, and diverting people who have come close to putting two and two together. Her greatest weakness is not kryptonite, but the fact that she cares for certain people more than others. That emotional level has been a problem for her, and she has been told to remain detached, which is she incapable of being. And her fundamental weakness is that she believes in the good of people, despite all the evidence that she has seen to the contrary, as well that her seeming invulnerability to physical attacks can prepare for the emotional ones." He put the file down. "How did I do?"

He was looking at Cat, but he seemed to be speaking to Kara.

"How long did you spend on it?" Cat asked.

"The last six weeks." Mulder told her. "Admittedly, trying to figure out who she is based on this is going to be a lot harder, considering that she isn't actually a criminal. I'd have to enter her profile into either a database of people in National City, and since I've been on record on many websites as adamantly being opposed to such things, finding out who Supergirl is will be a lot harder. Unless of course, she was arrogant enough to knock on my front door."

_There is no way he could know who I am _Kara was saying this particular mantra over and over. _I don't care if he's Mr. Criminal Minds himself. He does not know who I am. _And yet, he clearly did. He didn't know Supergirl's name, but he sure as hell knew everything else about her.

It clearly unsettled Cat Grant as well. "For someone who has been out of action the last several years, you haven't exactly eased into retirement. I ask again, who are youmaking these profiles for?"

Mulder hesitated, then gave a huge sigh. "No one. Oh, I won't deny a few more than prominent politicians sent requests, not to mentions some real nativist organizations, but I haven't shared any of these profiles with anyone. The reason I'm doing them is more to prove a point than anything else. Hell, maybe I've been waiting the last couple of years for someone like you to knock on my door."

"Why didn't you tell me you working on them?" Scully, who'd been very quiet up until now, finally spoke up.

"Because, honestly, I kind of figured we were on opposite sides on this issue," Mulder told her. "I remember when Supergirl made her debut last year. You haven't been singing her praises, but you didn't exactly object at what she's been doing either."

"She's saving the world from alien invaders, Mulder," Scully pointed out. "Need I remind you that's what we tried to do for several years? With precious little success?"

Mulder raised an eyebrow. "How much do you know about the X-Files?" he asked Cat.

"Only what I've been able to get from the public record." Cat was back to being her cagey reporter self. "But considering what happened in Skyland and Allentown, I can make some educated guesses."

Mulder gave a small laugh. "Then you realize the massive irony that's in play here," he told her. "For the better part of seven years, I had to do everything in my power to convince Scully that aliens even existed. I rescued her from a fricking flying saucer once, and she still didn't completely buy in for another year. So imagine my amusement to find that all this time has past, and we've completely reversed sides. _She's _now convinced aliens are here for the betterment of mankind, and I'm the one whose convinced they are as dangerous as the criminals they put away."

Kara couldn't help herself. "Hold on. You really think Supergirl is evil?"

"I never said that. I said she was as _dangerous. _There's a difference." Mulder reached into his pile of folders. "There's a fundamental flaw in a lot of the thinking that goes into the roles of these costumed heroes of their jobs. "

"What exactly is that flaw?' Cat demanded.

"Would it blow your mind if I were to tell you, that in every city where one of these 'heroes' have emerged, crime has actually gone up an average of six percent?" Mulder told her.

"You're lying." The words were out of Kara's mouth before she could stop herself.

He handed Cat a blue folder. "Crime statistics for the six cities where vigilantes and superheroes have taken up home over the past year. People may lie, math doesn't. Much as I may want it to."

Cat put on her glasses and opened the folder. For the next three minutes, she looked over the documents Mulder had assembled. "You do know Gotham City is going to throw everything off?" she said finally.

"I'm aware that it's more of statistical anomaly, then, say, Hell's Kitchen," Mulder admitted. "And if Batman would break that ridiculous 'no killing' rule, and just put the Joker down, the numbers for Gotham would drop at least four percent. But even if you disregard Gotham entirely, you can't exactly deny that in each city, there has been an increase in drug murders, systemic corruption, and low-level gang activity. "

"I assume if I run these numbers myself, they'll hold up," Cat actually sounded a little humble now.

"I would assume nothing less," Mulder told her. "This can't really come as a shock to you. When was the last time you saw Supergirl – or Superman, for that matter - stop a shooting in a crack den? Or stop a mob hit? And don't tell me it's because there's no drugs or mob in National City or Metropolis? These superheroes may be doing a fine job saving the world, but they're not doing much at stopping the war on drugs."

"Thank you, Mulder, but I knew David Simon before he decided to go Hollywood," Cat Grant pointed out. "No single superhero can solve the underlying problems with narcotics in this country. In fact, an argument could be made that the agency you work for has done as much damage to it as they have."

"It's a fair point," Scully admitted.

"Well, my point is still valid," Mulder pointed out. "And while I don't have the same pull I did in when I was with the Bureau, there are still some law enforcement people who will take my phone calls. And there are more than a few cops in National City and Metropolis – and Gotham, for that matter – who actually think that these costumed people have made the problem worse."

Kara was about to argue this point herself, when Cat spoke up. "You don't have to sell me on that one," she said. "I know a couple of high-ranking commanders who have been complaining that certain areas of their funding have been being cut ever since Supergirl came to National City. I thought it was sour grapes because she was doing their job for them." She sighed. "Seems I might have to write them a whopping big apology."

"One of those great lines from _Bride of Frankenstein _came when the good doctor gave a toast to a new world of gods and monsters," Mulder told them. "And ever since Superman arrived seven years ago, that's what the people of the world seem to think they are. And I'm not sure which is more frightening."

"I know a lot of people think that Supergirl is a monster, and we've seen how dangerous they can be," Kara said slowly. "But you can't honestly think they consider her a god."

"She has superhuman strength, can resist the powers of bullets and extreme temperatures, and can fly." Mulder reminded her. "I've read my mythology. Those are the textbook definitions of gods. And what does the media keep referring to her as? A hero. Which is at the center of many religious tomes as godlike. And if you comb the net for more than three minutes, you'll find dozens of sites ranging from her becoming President to putting her in charge of the entire world. Maybe some of them are just delusional nuts, but as we know all too well, nuts can walk among us as innocuously as serial killers. Ever since then, I've been waiting for someone to pull a John Hinckley or a Squeaky Fromme. And don't say it'll never happen."

This was becoming far more frightening than anything the Daxonites could've told her. Kara knew that there were strange people out there, and for much of the last year, she'd been so focused on saving the world, she'd done everything in her power to try and shut out the noise and the nutjobs. She'd assumed that Jonn and the rest of the DEO were trying to follow through on the loose cannons. But how many loose cannons were there out there? It was a big world even for Supergirl to keep on top of.

Cat was doing her best not to show how shaken she was. "I'll admit my guilt or at least acquiescence in some of this," she told Mulder. "But if you're trying to convince me I was wrong to track you down, you're doing a piss-poor job of it."

"Even if I wanted to come back-"

"What you want is irrelevant," Cat told him. "The aliens aren't hiding in plain sight, they're out in the goddamn open. Some of them are trying to take over the world. Now there are people doing their best to try and stop the obvious threats, like the ones that very nearly ended the world last year. But they can't do it alone. And I have to tell you, they're not exactly greeted with fanfares and parades for their job either."

Mulder looked at her. "I gave more than a decade of my life to trying to save the planet." He looked at Scully. "She did, too. We lost friends, we lost family…" he trailed off. Even now, he couldn't seem to get it out.

Scully had managed to maintain an iron façade, but it was slowly starting to break. "We lost our son."

Now Kara couldn't hold back a reaction. She'd read the files. Dana Scully had been rendered infertile by the experiments on her during her abduction. The last bits of information that she had written the year she was in the Bureau had only to do with the search for Mulder. Could she have been pregnant during that time?

Cat was clearly rocked by this as well. More potently, perhaps, because she was a mother. "Did the bastards kill him?" she demanded.

"No." Scully looked like she was going to start crying. "It's complicated. I – we –"

"We were trying to keep him safe," Mulder said. He steeled himself. "We sacrificed everything for the truth. And we convinced nobody. So maybe you're right. And maybe the world is willing to listen now. That doesn't mean we need to be the messengers anymore."

Cat looked remorseful. She'd been putting things in terms of such grand scale, she'd forgotten about the human factor. Hell, she'd read the files, and she'd known Melissa Scully and William Mulder were murdered before she sent Kara on this search. And she'd read about the body count. There'd been something about a three-year old named Emily that Scully had somehow been the birth mother due to experiments during the abduction. Had she misjudged this entire event?

"I'm sorry," she finally said. "I did something I thought I stopped doing twenty years ago. I made this all about my mistake. My letting this story go. I thought that the world needed you so badly I didn't even stop to consider whether you even wanted to go back to this."

Mulder kept his stoic face up, but he was a little stunned by this. "I'm glad you understand."

"It's just," Cat took a deep breath "I don't have to ask you if you saw the Cadmus blast earlier." Both of them nodded. "I'm not going to lie and say that's what brought me here; I was going to come a couple of weeks ago. But the fact is," she paused. "I'm going off the record here."

They both gave a small smile. "I'm kind of afraid. No, scratch that. I'm very afraid. Alien invasions and metahumans and basically everything you chased in the X-Files twenty years ago, they've become almost background noise now. I'll admit to my part in that, but none of this makes it any less concerning. I've faced my share of death threats over the years, but I've never come closer to actually dying than I did a few months ago. That does change how you see the world, and the mistakes that you've made. That being said, I should never have tried to make my mistakes part of your reclamation project. You want to stay off the grid, I have no place saying that you should voluntarily put yourself back in the line of fire."

Scully looked a little shocked at this. Mulder noticed, but decided to hold off on his remarks for later. "Thank you for understanding."

"There is something you can do for me, though." Cat told them. "Before I came here, I had an intermediary make contact with your friend Walter Skinner." She held up a hand. "You should know that you _did _convince somebody. It's been more than fifteen years, and he's still willing to go to the mat for you. He was, however, willing to give me access to some of the files you worked on."

Kara expected both of them to be angry. Instead, Scully looked bewildered, while she could swear something resembling hope had crossed Mulder's face. "I thought the files had been destroyed," he said.

"Maybe they have been," Cat told him. "But before they were, he made copies. Don't ask me how; I get the feeling he didn't just go to the nearest Kinko's with them."

"He was holding on to them all this time?" Scully asked.

"Friend of a friend," Kara told them. "I don't know who exactly, but they said they still believed in you."

Cat reached into her pocket. "They were big believers in high technology. They did the one thing you never got the chance to do when you were at the bureau." She took out the flash drive. "Make your work portable."

Mulder gently took it from Cat's hand, like a child receiving the Christmas present he'd never thought he'd get. "Have you read them?"

"There's over two hundred cases in there; I've barely scratched the surface," Cat reminded him. "Regardless of whatever decision you made, I figured they would do better in your hands than in mine."

Mulder was absolutely gobsmacked. "Forgive me, I… the last time I was ever in such awe, I finally saw a flying saucer. Of course, about a minute afterwards I was abducted by it. I'm guessing you knew how that turned out."

"Much as I'd like to know the magic behind that, I think I've said too much for now," Cat told him. "I have a simple request. All I want is for you and Scully to verify that the files are real, and that the conspiracy is, too."

"What are you going to go with that information?" Mulder actually sounded a little worried.

"I'm a big girl now, Mulder. And I happen to have Supergirl on speeddial. Regardless of her flaws, she believes in truth." Cat Grant said.

Scully spoke up. "You won't use our names?"

"You'll be a source with ties to law enforcement. That's a big enough net." Cat assured them.

"These people. They have a long reach. And you know that they're not afraid to kill to protect the truth from being revealed." Mulder said.

Cat rolled her eyes. "God, twenty-five years and you're still trying to protect me."

"A lot of our colleagues and family died trying to help us," Scully said. "You can understand why we're a little overprotective."

"Shouldn't that be our choice?" Kara spoke up. "Forgive me for saying this, but at some point, you have to accept that the entire world can't be saved by you alone."

Mulder looked at Kara. "That's strange, coming from a resident of a city protected by a superhero."

"I'll admit your research would give a lot of pundits talking points for a few news cycles," Kara said rapidly. "But what you're missing from those numbers is the fact that Superman and Supergirl and all the other 'costumed freaks' were never meant to be the saviors of the world or even their city. They're meant to be symbols, an impetus for people to be a part of something bigger than themselves. Now, maybe you're right, and the message has gotten lost in translation. But it doesn't change the bigger point."

"Which is what?" Mulder demanded.

"That no one gets there alone," Kara said. "No one – not even Supergirl – can do what they do without help. We all need to be part of a team."

Mulder remained enigmatic as always. Scully, however, seemed to react a little. Barely a twitch, but it was there.

"Thank you for coming," Mulder said. "Sorry to disappoint –"

"How long until you and Kara fly back to National City?" Scully asked.

Cat looked a little surprised but quickly recovered from it. "Tomorrow afternoon."

"We'll get back to you tomorrow morning," Scully said. "You've given us a lot to think about. And I need to have a serious conversation with… Mulder."

Kara had a feeling that, depending on her inflection, Scully has as many different meanings for 'Mulder' as the Hawaiians did for 'aloha'. And just based on the way she'd said it at that moment, she had a feeling it wasn't a friendly one.

"Okay, Mulder. You've spent six years dancing around this; now you're going to answer me," Scully demanded five minutes after Cat Grant and her assistant had departed. "Why don't you want to go back to work?"

Mulder looked at her. "I've already explained –"

"Actually, you haven't." Scully demanded. "Everything you've told me and the Bureau is logical and reasonable. But I know you, Mulder. Nothing in your entire life has been based on the exercise of either logic or reason. There's something deeper to this."

"I was sentenced to death, Scully." Mulder finally said. "We made our case before them, and they gave us the middle finger. We had to spend our lives on the run for five years. You couldn't even call your mother to tell her how she was doing. By the way, has she forgiven you yet?"

He immediately wished he hadn't said that. Scully's relationship with Maggie had always been one of the few stalwart things in her life. But giving up her grandson with no real explanation had been a blow that would've wounded a far stronger one. The fact that she and Mulder had gone fugitive less than a month later had finally cracked it. Dana barely spoke with Maggie anymore, and most of their exchanges were perfunctory.

"Right now, the truth is the matter of who is the loudest voice in the room. And I wrecked my vocal chords when no one was bothering to listen." Mulder told her. "The day before I was abducted, Skinner told me that I could bring a UFO to the White House and have an alien shake hands with the President. The bottom line was, they just don't like me. And now, aliens _are_ shaking hands with the President. What could I possibly offer in return?"

It was valid. There was no question of that. And Mulder had never been the kind of man who'd been willing to take a victory lap.

"But that's not the point either." Mulder told her. "The point is, I have far too much blood on my hands. I've caused too much pain. And I can't let your life suffer any more collateral damage for what is a futile quest."

How could she argue with this? What had she gained from all this? Her family had now essentially disowned her. Her sister was dead. Their son, gone beyond their reach. Years ago, when they'd been in that motel in Roswell, she'd said that she would do it all over again. It had been easy enough to say, when she thought that they had nothing left but each other. An alien apocalypse might have been easier to deal with then this holding pattern they were in.

"It's not futile, Mulder," she finally said. "In case you hadn't been paying attention, the most powerful woman in media is willing to risk her entire career to help us. "

"The date has passed, Scully," he told her. "There's been no alien invasion. Earth is still whole."

"Have you not been paying attention?" Scully reminded him. "Supergirl fought off an alien attack two months ago. Earth is not still whole. And we basically did nothing to help."

"There are other people who can do this," Mulder said again.

"The conspiracy never stopped, Mulder." Scully reminded him. "You and I both know that even if that black-lunged son of a bitch was blown to smithereens, there are still more than enough people willing to do his dirty work. And if they don't know where to look, they're going to do everything in their power to carry it through. Hell, maybe they're even using this is as a smokescreen."

Mulder was silent for a long moment. "For seven years, I tried to convince you about the alien menace. And your science was the only that saved me. So I've got to ask Scully, why did you believe so easily in Supergirl? Was it just because you saw it with your own eyes?"

Scully thought for a long time before she answered. "Your profile is sound, Mulder. I'll give you that much. But you left out one important detail. Whatever her real identity is, Supergirl has already experienced just how difficult it is to be a woman in this world. In addition to having to hide who she really is, she has to do that in a world where too many people still regard women as second class citizens. And because she is willing to do everything she does, knowing the extra level she has to deal with probably with both her identities. That takes a special kind of bravery that has nothing to do with being able to outrace a passenger jet to the ground."

"You always had that kind of bravery, Scully." Mulder pointed out. He gave a small smile. "And that cape and leotard would still look good on you."

Scully raised her eyebrow in a way he'd come to love. "I'm not doing cosplay again, Mulder."

"You knew about my tastes when you saw my video collection," They exchanged a brief smile. "You're the one who's lost the most Scully," he said slightly more seriously. "Why the hell would you want to go charging back into the mouth of hell when there's no real reason to do it?"

"The truth isn't a good enough reason any more, Mulder?" Scully argued. "These people need to be brought to the light. You once said you knew where to look but you didn't have the tools. From everything Cat Grant just told us, there are people who have the tools but don't know where to look."

Mulder was silent for another long moment. Then he looked at the flash drive. "Is this just because you want your own desk this time?" he finally asked.

"I've seen that woman in action," Scully reminded him. "I have a feeling they'll give us our own building."

"It'll probably be a former crack house," Mulder mumbled. "But it'll still probably have more leg room."

Halfway through the drive back to the hotel, Cat was still very quiet. Kara had begun to wonder whether or not she had overstepped her boundaries.

"I'm sorry if I went too far," she began to apologize.

"On the contrary, I think you said exactly the right thing," Cat told her. "I was so busy going through what was in the files, I forgot that Mulder and Scully had _lived_ through what had happened in them. What they went through the seven years they were on the X-Files would drain some of the most experienced lawmen I've ever met. I was trying to drag them back into without actually thinking if they wanted to be drawn back in."

"I honestly think Scully would've gone along with it regardless," Kara told her.

"This wouldn't work without both of them," Cat said. "I don't know what happened when they were outside the office, or while they were on the run, but clearly one broke the heart of the other. And honestly, that's one of the saddest things I've ever heard. Those two need each other – maybe not sexually, but surely intellectually."

Had Kara not met both of them, she wouldn't have been able to comprehend that. But in the few hours they'd spent together, she could tell their was a frission between the two that was so obvious it was practically visible.

"It's not the X-Files the two of them need. It's each other," Cat told her. "And in your bumbling but endearing way, I think you reminded them of that. I just hope that it gives them the forward momentum to take the next step."

"And what exactly is that going to be?" Kara asked.

At that instant, Cat's phone rang. "I honestly figured it would take them another ten minutes to call back," she said before she picked it up.

"We have terms," Scully said brusquely.

"I'm not going to go live with anything without your permission," Cat said without even bothering to ask who it was.

"We need to meet with whatever people are responsible for supervising alien activity now," Mulder told her.

"You're not going back to the Bureau?" Cat asked.

"Skinner was always willing to go to the mat for us," Mulder told them. "And I have no doubt he'll do it again. But it will help if he has ammunition. And since we never got much help with interagency cooperation when we were _with_ the Bureau –"

"I understand," Cat told them. "I'll make some calls as soon as I hang up. What's your other condition?"

"One that you're in a unique position to handle," Scully told her. "We want a sitdown with Supergirl."

If Kara had not spent a lifetime training herself to withhold her control, she might've run their rental off the road.

"I'm not like James Olsen. I don't have a special beacon to summon her," Cat Grant was clearly a little surprised at the request. "When do you want to talk to her?"

"Sunrise tomorrow. Just outside the Vietnam Memorial," Mulder told her. "And yes, it could just as easily be at breakfast, but I've got a flare for the dramatic to maintain."

Cat gave a small smile. "You'll fit right in at National City. I'll make it happen."

She hung up. Kara knew now she had to tread very carefully. "How are we going to get Supergirl here?"

Cat looked out at the approaching D.C. skyline. "The first time I was in DC, I had a chance to talk with Ben Bradlee. He was an old codger, but he knew talent when he saw it. Had a great ear for phrases, too. One in particular sticks in my head: 'Non-denial denial.' It's one of those things you don't know what it means until you have to use it."

She looked at the driver's side. "I may be getting a little older, but I'm not a complete idiot. I know that you've had to run a lot of errands just before Supergirl arrived on scene. I know you were never present for any of those interviews I had with her over the last year. And I know, you seemed very relieved when she and you were on my balcony at the same time."

"Miss Grant, I –"

"I'm in an awkward position," Cat went on. "If I had confirmation as to who Supergirl actually was, that would be newsworthy, and I would be obligated to pass it on. But if I passed that information through – let's call them, an interested third party who required confidentiality going forth – and that third party honored their commitment, then their would be no need for further discussion on the subject." She looked at the rearview mirror. "Understand?"

"Yes," Kara said. "Yes, I do."

"I'm glad I brought you in on this story, Danvers," Cat told her. "You always had a sharp mind."

They didn't say anything more the rest of the ride back, but Cat had a small grin on her face the rest of the way.


	8. Chapter 7

**Chapter 7**

**VIETNAM MEMORIAL**

**5:38 A.M.**

Fox Mulder had seen a lot, inside the Bureau and outside of it. As someone who'd been on record multiple times over the past quarter of a century advocating not only that extraterrestrials existed, but that the government should be putting all its energy towards making contact before he'd had his own close encounter, he had never quite lost his sense of wonder at the paranormal. It may have got stagnant for long periods, but it was still there, waiting to emerge.

That said, he had to admit that his first encounter with Supergirl was something of a disappointment. He and Scully had shown up about twenty minutes before sunrise expecting that Supergirl would make the grand entrance that had been covered by so many TV cameras and shaky Iphones. It therefore came as something of a disappointment for the two of them to arrive, and find that Cat Grant and Supergirl were already there.

"If I didn't know you better, Mulder, I'd say you were expecting something grander," Scully said. "You're about to have a meeting an honest to God superhero, and you don't exactly seem thrilled."

"I just…" he trailed off.

"You wanted to her fly out of the sky, and make a perfect three point landing," Scully finished. "Mulder, this is supposed to be a secret rendezvous. A sonic boom would kind of attract unnecessary attention, don't you think?"

Mulder looked a little sheepish. "Well, maybe Wonder Woman won't let me down."

"Don't get ahead of yourself Mulder," Scully said. "One feminist superhero icon at a time."

Cat Grant turned around. "I hope you know what you're doing, Mulder," she told him. "It's not exactly a great idea to leave National City unguarded for very long."

Scully looked at Supergirl. "My partner's going to remain taciturn as ever," she said slowly. "But I'd like to say upfront, it's a privilege that you took time out of your busy schedule to meet with us."

"Trust me when I say, the honor's mine," Supergirl said. "You were trying to protect this planet from alien invasion before I was even sent here. And from what I understand, you didn't have even a hundredth of the resources that are available now."

"How do you know about us?" Mulder asked.

"When Miss Grant began pursuing the story, she made contact with Alex Danvers, someone who has a job that similar to the one you once had," Supergirl said.

"It's really her you owe the gratitude to," Cat told her. "Without her work, we wouldn't have the files, which means you wouldn't have them now."

"You've read the files," Mulder addressed himself to Supergirl. "What do you know about the invasion we tried to stop?"

_He's not wasting any time. _"Nothing that would help you," Supergirl said apologetically. "I know of alien shape shifters, I know about alien viruses, I know about aliens with toxic blood. I don't know of any that spent the 20th century trying to conquer the Earth. And the idea that there's any kind of shadow government clearing a path for them is complete news to me."

"That part I didn't expect you to know about," Mulder said, surprisingly. "Everything I've heard about the last few years is built on the fear of aliens taking over." He paused. "And to be upfront, I'm not sure how much I could help you there. The Syndicate – which was in charge of it was slaughter in 1999 – and the last person who I know for certain was in connection with it, presumably died in 2002. I have no doubt they're still out there, but they've probably taken a new form."

Cat Grant looked at him. "I went through most of the files. You really never had any names for any of the conspirators?"

Scully answered this time. "They seemed to delight in being nameless. The one who was are biggest threat – we just called him the Smoking Man. Even when we got a name for him, we're not even sure it was real."

"Wait a minute, you had one?" Supergirl said.

This time Cat answered. "They found one in '99. C.G.B. Spender. Wife of Cassandra, who was murdered at El Rico, father of Jeffrey, an FBI agent who was assassinated supposedly by his own father three days later." She looked at them. "I've been trying to dig up information on him using your father's name. I keep coming up with almost nothing."

"Almost nothing is more than I ever got," Mulder asked. "What do you know?'

"He worked with the State Department during the height of the Red Scare," Cat told him. "There are travel vouchers of him going to Hawaii in 1953 to interview a man with severe radiation burns. We have travel records of him making flights to Tunisia starting in the 1960s and lasting almost til the end of the 20TH century. Most of them had to do with the collection of the reserves of the smallpox virus, which I know is somehow tied to your work. There are connections to him and your father up until 1973, which according to your own files is when your sister was abducted."

Scully gave a smile. "That's a hell of a lot of work, considering we're positive C.G.B. Spender wasn't even his real name."

"Well, don't get too thrilled," Cat told them. "There's no record of him after the inferno at El Rico. Until you told me about seeing him in 2002, I assumed he'd died there."

"That's a good term: assumed dead," Mulder said. "Funny story. In June of 1997, he was shot in my apartment, supposedly he lost so much blood that there was no way he could've survived. Yet he showed up in the FBI offices in May of 1998. I'm positive he orchestrated the X-Files being shut down then. Then in the spring of 2000, he was supposedly dying of brain cancer, breathing through a hole in his neck. That should've been enough to kill him right then, but he got thrown down a flight of stairs. Kind of interesting that we managed to find him alive in a mesa in New Mexico two years later."

It said a lot for the state of the world that Cat seemed a little more shocked as to what they were suggesting. "Did they kill him then?"

"I saw two black helicopters blow that place to smithereens," Mulder said grimly. "No living thing could've survived it. But then, you'd say the same thing about a seventy-five year old with terminal cancer being thrown down a flight of stairs.

Supergirl had seen some pretty remarkable back from the dead stories the last couple of years. This, however, was bordering on incredulity. She decided to let this go for now, and concentrate on something she could handle. "What about the bounty hunters or Jeremiah Smith? Do you think they could be lying in wait?"

"The last time I saw either of them was around the time of Mulder's abduction," Scully told her. "I killed one before he could tell me anything. And I last saw Smith disappearing on to a spaceship. After I left the X-Files, it seemed that they'd taken on a different form, but I'm not necessarily convinced that was ever really them."

Cat considered this for a moment. "How were they different?"

"They had great physical strength." Scully paused, then spoke reluctantly to Supergirl. "Kind of the way you'd be if you weren't on our side. I saw one of them hit a man so hard, they knocked his head off."

"Why the hell didn't you come out with this earlier?" Cat demanded.

"For one thing, it didn't match any of the aliens that we'd spent seven years chasing." Mulder told her "And for another, when you cut them, shot them, they bled. They just didn't die when you killed them. The man I was tried for killing, he was one of these so-called alien replacements."

Supergirl was stunned at this. There'd been some information like this in the X-Files, but as it had happened after Mulder and Scully were out of the Bureau, she'd never been sure how seriously to take it. "I thought you didn't kill him."

"Oh I did kill him." Mulder told them. "He just got better. But I've done my research. There's nothing concrete demonstrating that these aliens bare any resemblance to Kryptonians. They can't run like you, they can't jump like you, they sure as hell can't fly. I honestly was inclined to believe they were part of a government conspiracy. Just not one connected to aliens. Or at least any alien we went after."

"So they're just what, some modern version of the Terminator," Cat asked.

"The government spent much of the Cold War trying to find a way to design a superior soldier, " Mulder told them. "We investigated a couple of those cases early in our time on the X-Files. I always felt that they were part of this level of the conspiracy. Scully would've argued we were chasing that for a while. Our military experiment on human beings using the science of Axis powers. This may have been one of the end results."

Kara thought for a moment of that monster she'd battled with Clark just a few weeks ago. It had seemed to be the work of some kind of genetic project to combat aliens. Was it possible… "What do you think about Cadmus?" she asked Mulder.

"I think if it is a force trying to take on the 'alien menace', Supergirl wasn't quite sure how to deal with the fact that he actually did air quotes over the last two words, "whoever's behind is being really bold, considering that whatever conspiracies against aliens have spent at least seventy years in the shadows."

"Do you think it could be your shadow government?" Cat Grant had clearly caught on.

"Not for a second," Mulder responded instantly. "You don't spend a lifetime as the puppetmasters and then come out on stage for a bow because of a PR battle."

"Maybe you do. You just pretend you're a different puppet."

Scully had never made these kinds of metaphors before. "What are you talking about?" Supergirl asked.

"Michael Kristchgau told you everything that you believed in was a lie," Scully said. "That everything involving aliens was part of a cover up for a buildup of the military industrial complex. And you were pretty sold on it for nearly a year."

"Yes, but it was bullshit," Mulder told her. "He even admitted as much to you before he was murdered."

"What if it was only a half-truth?" Scully told him. "What if they were both true?"

Cat Grant suddenly picked up on what they were getting at. "Operation Paper Clip. The leper camps in Virginia. Your own abduction. You're saying that was the cover story."

"Our own government has been experimenting on us since the Cold War," Mulder said. "They just didn't tell us the truth on where they were getting the textbooks for the experiments."

"Cadmus is a part of this," Supergirl told them, almost to herself.

"Even if this is true, we still need proof," Scully told them.

Cat looked at them. "I might have an idea where you can start. I looked at the file the first time you and Scully were kicked out of the FBI," she said. "You said you found a mountain of files at the Strughold Mining Company."

"Don't get your hopes up," Mulder told her. "A few months afterwards, Scully went back down there. All of the vaults had been sealed with concrete. Clearly, they moved on them the second we visited."

"Maybe, but the Strughold Corporation still exists," She pulled out her phone. "The head of the business, Conrad, was clearly the kind of person your Syndicate would've done dealings with. There were rumors that he built his fortune off Jewish fleeing Austria just prior to the invasion. And he had vast holdings in Tunisia."

"Is it too much to hope for that he was immolated somewhere in 1999?" Mulder asked.

"No such luck. He died in his sleep in 2004." Cat told them grimly. "But his nephew Franz runs the corporation now. And it looks like evil runs in the family. The Planet did a series linking him to the coup in the Ukraine a couple of years back."

"That doesn't necessarily hold true that he's part of it," Mulder said. "The Syndicate may have been many things, but the one thing they would never do is help Russia with anything."

"New generation, new way of thinking, Mulder," Scully reminded him. "Besides that _would _fit the side of the conspiracy we'd been looking into now."

Cat Grant turned to Supergirl. "I realize I may be being presumptuous with your time, but…"

"Where exactly are the headquarters?" Supergirl asked.

"Munich."

Supergirl looked around. "Be careful." Mulder told her. "I don't know if these people would have kryptonite in their vaults, but I'm damn sure they know of ways to kill aliens that we haven't even thought of yet."

"Thank you for trusting me."

"Didn't say I did yet." Supergirl must have raised an eyebrow in a very Scully like way, because he followed that with: "But you're winning me over."

Supergirl nodded, and was gone in a flash.

"Is it all right to have a bucket list after you've been dead already?" Mulder asked, after the wind died down. "Because I'm pretty sure seeing that was on it."

Cat Grant shook her head. "And I thought _I _had a strange life." She gathered herself. "That's the first part of our agreement. You ready for me to live up to the second?"

Mulder and Scully exchanged that silent telepathy they had mastered over a decade at the FBI and beyond. "They'd be willing to meet with us?" Scully said first. "We're not going to need some kind of code word clearance?"

"They probably won't let you see the big board," Cat admitted. "But I know a couple of the people who work there, and considering that I had to get their assistance to get a look at your files in the first place, I'd say they'd be willing to meet with you."

Mulder looked at her. "I've had some top-heavy informants in my time. And they were assassinated trying to help me. And that may have been a kinder fate than what eventually happened to the third."

Cat raised an eyebrow of her own. "Are you telling me this is my last chance to take the blue pill? Because I have a pretty good idea just how deep the rabbit hole is."

"Trust me, Catherine, you don't," Scully told her. "But I don't expect you to walk away, either."

"I'm just making sure you're fairly warned," Mulder told her.

"Thank you? Now, will you come with me to my plane? There's a lot to go through before we get to National City."

DEO WAR ROOM

Alex Danvers walked in. "I just talked with Supergirl," she said. "Cat Grant finally managed to get Mulder and Scully to accept our help. "

"How long did it take?" Winn asked.

"Three separate meetings."

Winn shook his head. "It only took her two to land the Emperor of Japan," he said. "She really believes they're worth."

"You've seen what was in those files, Agent Schott, " Hank/Jonn reminded him. "You honestly saying that's not a bigger deal?"

"Oh, I have no doubt we need their help," Winn said. "But when I talked to James, he said they might not want to take it. And given everything they went through back then, I'm actually a little stunned the Grant Treatment worked so easily."

"Based on what she was told, Mulder and Scully think we have more to worry about then they do." Alex said. "And given the amount of headaches we went through just the past few months, they may have a point."

"You're probably right," Jonn agreed. "The government was barely okay with our field of our operations when we were keeping the Earth safe from invasion. We start poking to see where the bodies are buried, we're going to get hit from more angles then when they found out that I wasn't the real Hank Henshaw."

"Maybe they've already started," Winn told them. "Ever since Cadmus came on line, I'm beginning to think they at least share a couple of people with this Syndicate that the X-Files spent so much time trying to nail down."

Alex walked over to the keyboard. "Cat and Supergirl are apparently thinking along the same lines," she told him. "You got anything that might be able to back it up?"

"I've been doing tech analysis on that blast we got from them two days ago," Winn told them. "Most of its using technology that's been on the Dark Web for awhile. But there's an older code running through it. It took me a few hours to isolate it, but we've seen it before." He paused. "It's NSA."

This was a big deal. The NSA had been one of the DEO's biggest bureaucratic nightmares, usually when it came to fighting over budgets, but most of it had stayed at that level. "You're sure about that?" Jonn asked.

"Really wish I wasn't." Winn told them. "Now the NSA comes up more than a few times in the X-Files proper, but the last time it shows up may be the most relevant. In early 2002, when Scully was out of the Bureau and Mulder was in hiding, the NSA reached out to Scully. The pertinent part is the NSA had been running a covert surveillance programs on many of its citizens a full decade before the Patriot Act gave them license to do so. "

Alex and Jonn were well aware of this, and had been royally angry about it, but had never been in a position to put up much of an argument, considering that a lot of the early tech for much of the DEO had come from this kind of technology. It would've been a case of the pot calling the kettle green.

"The files give any more detail than that," Jonn asked.

"There's one source who's not reliable, and one who was," Winn told him. "Which is shorthand for saying one killed the other. You should also know that this is one of those files that Mulder's replacements seem to have gone out of their way to gut."

This came as something of a shock. They'd known that the last year of the X-Files existence, it had been run by two other agents: John Doggett, who had been called in to head the manhunt for Mulder, and Monica Reyes, a colleague of Doggett's who was, as far as they could see, the only agent who had _volunteered _to the X-Files. Much of their work seemed connected less to the alien invasion Mulder and Scully had spent seven years tracking, and to something that Doggett referred to as the 'supersoldier' program. They had assumed that Doggett, who had no experience with the paranormal before, was just using this as a euphemism for anything he considered alien. This was the first sign that there might have been something more underhanded than that.

"You maybe Skinner did something to the file before we got to it?" Winn asked.

"Was there something in the case that might have affected his agents?" Alex asked.

"Just something about their meeting when they had to do with – Scully's son," Winn frowned. "Think he was trying to cover for Mulder and Scully having an affair?"

"That would only make sense if they were still in the Bureau," Jonn said thoughtfully. "Mulder was fired a month before Scully gave birth."

"There might be another reason," Alex said thoughtfully. "After Scully was abducted, the experiments performed on her gave her cancer, and left her barren. Now, there's no record of this in the official X-Files, but William Mulder's birth certificate was issued in May of 2001."

There were implications here that were really dark even for an agency that had to deal with alien invasions. "You think Scully's pregnancy had some kind of paranormal implications herself?" Jonn said.

"Maybe," Winn said reluctantly. "She didn't disclose until after Mulder was found dead. And there are a couple of files around 2001 that seem to deal with things are kind of frightening. There's a Duffy Haskell who came to see Scully and Doggett in January of 2001, claiming his wife was a multiple abductee, that she was given cancer from experiments, that she was rendered infertile, yet gave birth. To something that would be more familiar to Mr. Spock than Dr. Spock. "

"Has that file been gutted?" A nasty suspicion was starting to form in Alex's head.

"With one blank that I can fill in," Winn said. "A week before Scully gave birth, Doggett was called in to investigate the murder of a Dr. Frederick Parenti. Parenti was Haskell's obstetrician. A couple of days after this, Scully gave birth to William. In Macon, Georgia. In the middle of what could be charitably called a ghost town. I don't think it's because all the maternity suites in DC were booked."

There were files of aliens and humans having children together in the DEO, of course. It had been going for awhile, mostly between those species of aliens who were compatible with human biology. (Alex had never had this conversation with Kara, and hoped like hell she'd never have to.) But all of these matches had been made out of love. This was the first one that Alex had heard of sounded like a science experiment where the mother's feelings had never been in consideration. It sounded like Scully and Mulder had known this, and had gone out of their way to make sure that no one in the Bureau knew. Or maybe they hadn't known it, and had found out in ways that were more frightening for a new mother to contemplate.

"Is any of this relevant to what we're trying to find in connection with Cadmus?" she asked instead.

"I know that the DEO would never sanction anything like what seems to be hinted at here," Winn said honestly. "Cadmus – I'm beginning to think they might do anything to have an edge over what they consider an alien menace."

She considered this. "Until Mulder and Scully decide to tell us about their son, I think we owe them the decency not to dig into their personal lives any more than we already have. Supergirl's following up a lead that might be able to give us answers to one section of the conspiracy. We'll concentrate on that for now."

"Agreed," Jonn said. "The NSA angle is going to cause enough problems, and it's going to be difficult enough to get Mulder and Scully to trust us. They find out we've literally been going into their bedroom for information, they'll disappear again. Probably somewhere not even we can find them."

Winn actually looked relieved to hear this. "I'll start following up on that."

What nobody on the DEO could've known was, at that very moment, Scully and Mulder were gently beginning to reveal details of their personal lives that they had never even told their colleagues on the X-Files about.

Cat had assured them that she had no intention of telling anybody about their personal lives. "I've never been that kind of journalist," she reminded them. "Though I thought Bill Clinton's behavior was disgusting, I thought the way my colleagues handled Monicagate may have been a low point in my career. And this doesn't even come close to meeting the smell test."

"We appreciate your discretion," Scully said. "Frankly, I was our colleagues at the Bureau had had more. From the moment I starting working on the X-Files, I'm pretty sure there were pools being formed as to when we'd start sleeping together."

"The same pools started when I began working at the Planet," Cat said. "Which wouldn't bother me as much as the fact that half the people who bet in it were woman – and they were betting against me."

"I guess my gentlemanly behavior preceded me," Mulder said.

"How many of your Playboys kept getting sent in the Bureau mail?" Scully said with a raised eyebrow.

"The journalism in the magazine was top notch," Both women were silent. "Come on, Catherine, back me up here."

"I really don't care about who did what, and where, and with whom," Cat said slowly. "The only thing I really need to know is that did this at any time affect how your work went."

She knew she was going to be stepping on to a mine field here, but these questions had to be asked. Besides, Cat had a feeling that Mulder and Scully wanted to tell at least this part of the story.

"In February of 2000, Scully and I finally gave in to what we'd been fighting against for six and a half years," Mulder said slowly. "Part of it was brought out of grief. My mother had just committed suicide, and not long after I concluded that Samantha was dead."

This was the only file that Cat Grant had read that she distrusted the veracity of. Mulder had been vulnerable in the days leading up to that file, and his conclusion had all the hallmarks of a hallucination. Even considering how bizarre they were, that Mulder had just been willing to give up on a thirty year quest based on 'children in starlight' was hard for her to accept. She decided not to argue it though, because she knew she was going to be ripping off the scabs of a lot of old wounds.

"In July of that year, after Mulder was abducted," Scully took a deep breath. "I found out I was pregnant. You've read the files, I think you know just how impossible that was."

"How did you deal with it?" Cat asked.

"I didn't," Scully admitted. "I threw all of my energy into the manhunt for Mulder. I only told Skinner about it. I didn't even tell the man who got assigned to the X-Files as a result."

"That would be John Doggett," Cat told her. "Have you managed to keep track of him over the years?"

"Unfortunately, no." Mulder said. "The last either of us saw of him was at my trial. He and Monica Reyes – you know about her as well" Cat nodded, "agreed to testify on my behalf. As a result, the X-Files were shut down, and they were reassigned. We haven't seen them since."

Cat had managed to have some luck tracking them down, but before she went any further she had a feeling Scully and Mulder needed to tell this part of their story.

"About a month into my second trimester, Doggett and I received work from an a man who claimed to be the husband of an alien abductee – a Duffy Haskell." Scully's eyes looked far away. "Her story was a mirror of mine, including the fact that she had been rendered infertile and had a baby. Except when she gave birth, the baby looked like an alien."

"Hadn't you heard stories like that before?" Cat asked.

"The man who supervised her pregnancy was a Dr. Parenti," Scully took a deep breath. "Parenti was my obstetrician. I tried not to panic, even after I was put through a series of deceptions, that led me to believe something was wrong with my unborn child. Then I kept distracting myself." She looked at Cat. "You've read the files. You know what kind of distractions there were."

"When did it get to the point where you couldn't ignore it?"

"When someone started killing people connected with my baby. The first of those so-called alien replacements Mulder talked about." Scully said slowly. "And then people started saying my child was some kind of miracle."

"Every child is a miracle," Cat Grant told them. "I don't have a great relationship with my son, but he's still a miracle."

"Was your son ever described in terms more human than human?" Scully asked slowly. "Did they send the terminator to stop you from giving birth?"

Now was not the time for Cat to start making commentary that there might very well be some children out there who were alien born who'd been chased for the same reason. It wouldn't have helped, and she had a feeling that most of those stories had happened after Scully had given birth. "Which bring to my biggest question, Mulder, and you damn well better answer honestly," Cat asked instead. "After she gave birth, why did you disappear again?"

Mulder had the decency to look very uncomfortable. "There was a hit out on my life," he started slowly. "And Scully begged me to disappear."

"You've had hits out on your life before," Cat bore down. "And I have a feeling these files are just full of examples of you never listening to your partner even when she was right. Why did you listen when she was clearly wrong?"

There was a very long pause. "I begged her to come with me," Mulder finally said. "She was on maternity leave. Doggett and Reyes could handle the X-Files. I had no intention of leaving the woman I loved, and my son behind. I couldn't imagine how hard it had been to get by those months she thought I was dead. I thought this might kill her."

Scully's iron façade was breaking now. "I couldn't leave my mother alone," she said with tears in her eyes. "She'd been through so much because of me. Melissa was murdered, I'd had cancer, I couldn't take her grandson away from her, possibly never to be seen again. And I knew no matter how much I tried to explain, if I disappeared, she would never forgive me." Now was not the time to tell Cat Grant that had happened anyway.

Cat seemed to understand. "All right. Thank you for telling me."

Scully actually seemed a little surprised. "You don't want to know about our son?"

"Does it have something to do with what were about to work on?" Cat asked.

There was a much longer pause. "Maybe. Maybe not," Mulder said finally.

"Then the only question I have about him is, do you want me to try and find him?"

A different kind of look passed between the two partners – an equal mixture of hope and despair. "I gave him up for adoption more than fourteen years ago," Scully finally said. "And I made your sure that it was sealed and that there was no way to trace it back to me."

There was a lot buried here, but Cat was determined not to ask unless they gave direct answers. "Everything leaves a digital trail somewhere, Dana," she said deliberately. "Maybe you thought you had to protect your son, and that's why you did it. But I know one thing for certain. Even if you thought you couldn't protect him, I know that Supergirl can."

Now there was definite hope on both their faces. "She'd be willing to do that for virtual strangers?" Mulder asked.

"That's the kind of people she loves to help," Cat reminded them.

They both nodded. "All right. But not until this part of it is over," Scully said.

_This part _had a lot of implications, but Cat decided not to press it for now. "Which leaves us with one last issue. I did some looking for Doggett and Reyes before I got on the plane. Finally managed to get some results a few hours ago."

"They're not still with the Bureau, are they?" Mulder asked.

Cat shook her head. "John Doggett stuck it out until 2007. He transferred back to the New York field office in '06. Then he rejoined the NYPD."

Scully seemed a little surprised. "Thought he'd burned his bridges there."

"They need all the help they could get." Cat told them. "Right now, he's the Lieutenant Commander of the Major Case Task Force. They handle long-term investigations, mostly into drug cartels. He's on the track to become Commissioner if he lasts long enough."

"He was always more political then I was," Mulder said. "What about Monica?"

"She retired from the Bureau in 2010," Cat told them. "After that, she kind of disappeared off the map. Rumor is she took up working with this consultancy group called The Trust made up of ex law enforcement, but its been really hard locating her."

WRIGHT-PATTERSON AIR FORCE BASE

Lillian Luthor didn't respond to summons, and she didn't take orders. No one ever told Luthors what to do.

But there were some people that you couldn't afford to alienate. And there was some people who represented interests that made even people of her station have qualms about disturbing.

So less than thirty-six hours after the Cadmus blast had come over the Internet, she had received a message on her private server – one that not even her son had known about. There wasn't a return address attached. Just a time and a location.

The Luthor family had always been one that knew where all the bodies were buried, including some of people that weren't dead yet. But in their dealings, they had run into a group of people who had known where the bodies were, because they arranged for that to happen before they were born. Lillian had outlived all of those men. The missive, however, had come from one of them.

So Lillian found herself in the position that she rarely did – going to a meeting place, and not knowing who she was going to encounter. It was not a sensation she was comfortable with, and it didn't make her feel much better to know that, on one of the busiest military bases in the country, she seemed to be in the one hangar that was deserted. She didn't believe in Keyser Soze, but she knew that someone with the Consortium's power had to have arranged this.

Then she saw she wasn't alone. In the shadows, she could see someone with a lit cigarette. She knew that some people were immortal, but even for him that was ridiculous.

The illusion only persisted for a moment. The figure was clearly female. Suddenly, Lillian knew who it was - and it didn't exactly fill her with reassurance.

"That's a filthy habit," she said slowly.

"Considering what your own vices are, you're in no position to judge."

"There were easier to ways to make contact," she said slowly.

"Come on, Lillian," Monica Reyes said. "Is that any way to talk to your cousin?"


	9. Chapter 8

**Chapter 8**

**STRUGHOLD CORPORATE OFFICES**

**MUNICH, GERMANY**

If Kara Danvers had one long held prejudice, it was against the people of Germany. She knew it wasn't fair, considering their efforts towards reform in the new millennium, and she was a big booster of the current chancellor. It didn't, however, change the fact that a huge amount of their long and unpleasant history using people like her as the embodiment of perfection. Much of their scientific breakthroughs had been built on the back of lesser people, much like the so many of the races that the Kryptonians had to deal with. Clark had similar difficulties.) And that was _before _she had learned that the American government had basically recruited so many of their former scientists to carry on their work for them.

The fact that she now had to go into the lion's mouth didn't make her incredibly comfortable either, especially as she figured it would be easier to do it as Kara rather than Supergirl. When she found the original building, the security level was only slightly less impressive than some nuclear facilities (and for all she knew, they did have plutonium somewhere on the premises). Normally, she felt a slight tinge of residual guilt when she had to use her powers to commit criminal acts, no matter how benevolent the motivation. She didn't feel in this case.

Kara didn't think a conspiracy that was at a minimum seventy years old would be foolish enough to keep their secret documents in plain view. Then again, she had learned that Mulder and Scully had come across a copy of the MY Files, which supposedly had all the secrets the government had on aliens, just waiting around to be attack by the most innocent of hackers. It was a new century, and a new breed, but anything was still possible.

Before she had gone in, she made contact with the DEO and told them of her initiative. She'd expected to get some blowback from Jonn or Alex, but they'd been remarkably fine with what she was planning. And when Winn heard what was on the menu, he practically salivated at the idea.

"Winn Schott finally gets to go after the Nazis," he was saying into her earpiece. "My grandmother Bernice would be so proud."

"We're not going after the Ark of the Covenant here," Kara reminded him.

"Yeah. This could actually be bigger than that," Winn pointed out. "All right, I'm gone through the schematics, and as you'd expect for a top secret corporate facility, they are maddeningly vague. But I think that you're best bet may be in the subbasement."

"Any reason why?"

"There's a room on the far end with high level security which the thermal scan is showing readings at below zero," Winn said. "It's looking like the entire area is being kept with liquid nitrogen."

"Sub-zero temperatures," Kara said thoughtfully. "What did we read in those early X-Files about something being kept in cold storage?"

"I wouldn't get your hopes up," Winn told her. "About five years later, when the alien resistance destroyed the syndicate, one of the things they did was steal the alien genome. "

"It's been nearly twenty years since then," Kara reminded him. "A lot can change in that much time."

"Well, whatever's down there, it's definitely something important," Winn told her. "Give me a minute, and I'll clear you a path."

Under other circumstances, Kara would probably have dashed through the security cameras. But this place had digital sensors that could pick up on body motion. She didn't want to alert security until she absolutely had to. Which she had a feeling she was going to need to do sooner than she'd like.

"All right. You're clear to go."

Kara rushed as quickly as she could when she got the elevator. It was made up of cast iron that she could've pulled a part without even a thought. But the last thing she wanted the conspiracy to know was that an alien was trying to invade. They didn't react well to that.

"I'm overriding the code now," Winn told her. "Was there any record of what may happened to those hackers who helped Mulder and Scully while they were on the X-Files?"

"I did some checking," Kara mentioned. "John Byers, Melvin Frohike and Ringo Langley are all buried in Arlington National Cemetery. "

"I know that," Winn said. "It's just these files are filled with people who have been thought dead, and in some cases buried, who are actually still alive."

"Let's worry about that another day," Kara said. At that moment, the security pass went from red to green.

"Just making conversation," Winn told her. "I can walk and chew gum at the same time."

She got in the elevator. "How hard did you have to work to bypass the servers?"

"There aren't a lot of hackers who can do this," Winn said thoughtfully. "But considering the source, there may be some surprises waiting. Be ready."

WRIGHT PATTERSON AIR FORCE BASE

"You know, I'd think given your relationship with your own children, you'd welcome the occasional family reunion," Monica Reyes said.

"Considering that your side of the family disowned mine when I married Lionel, I'm not exactly thrilled by it," Lillian Luthor said. "And don't pretend that this anything other than business."

Monica took a drag of her cigarette. "The man that I work for isn't happy with the last few days," she said slowly.

"I don't care who you take orders from. Luthors answer to no one."

"Do you want me to report that back to him?"

"I'm a little surprised that your employer would trust you at all. Wasn't your time at the Bureau spent working with his archnemesis?" Lillian demanded.

"His being Mulder's nemesis would make him the hero of the story," Monica said slyly. "Are you implying that he's on the right side of history now?"

"Are you?"

Monica actually seemed to give this thought. "I'm trying to protect the people I care for. Which is more than he ever would. And there is an argument about working behind the scenes. As opposed to making a spectacle of yourself for no good reason."

"The invasion has begun, Monica."

"If you really believe that, you're naïve. Which is something Luthors aren't." Monica told them.

"You should speak. Where were your people when the world nearly ended? Don't tell me they had oxygen masks ready."

"They managed to forestall the invasion by nearly a century. Working in the shadows has done a lot of good. Which your little light show undid in a few minutes."

"At least I'm willing to stand and fight to try and save the world. The most your employer did was try to save his chain-smoking ass." Lillian snarled.

"And it's been working." Monica paused. "But then, you know that. You're the one who helped put him back together after he was nearly blown to smithereens."

Lillian could've throttled her cousin for that little reminder. "He made me a generous offer," she said slowly.

"One which you've been using for your own ends ever since," Monica told her.

"He should be grateful for my help. Not holding it over me."

"That sense of gratitude is the only reason you're still alive," Monica said calmly. "Don't think just because you're a Luthor you're not invulnerable. "

"You really think you can just take me out like I'm one of them?"

"Half the world would rejoice if your private jet crashed into a mountain. Haven't you heard? You're part of the one percent. One of these days, one of the people you walked over to get to where you are will end up making his name by taking care of you."

Lillian Luthor was used to this kind of talk – she could even take it from her family. Hell, part of her enjoyed it. "I did what I did to try and save the planet. The methods your employer utilized may have worked in an era when aliens weren't taking selfies on Everest, but we're in a post-Superman world. He'd know that if he'd actually show his face."

"He has more important matters to attend to than this," Monica said casually.

"And what would they be? Worrying that Mulder will make another anonymous blog in a chatroom on the Dark Web?" Lillian asked. "You know, with all the time he spent dealing with that gadfly, he could've actually stopped an invasion?"

That blow clearly struck home, and not just because of whom Monica represented. "Mulder was never going to amount to a threat, you're right," she said slowly. "He's had to deal with people who might be more dangerous – like your son."

"My son is a great man. Something your employer will never be."

"Your son could've undone all the work we were trying to do. And its only because of the alliances that he's managed to hold on to – even while incarcerated – that we haven't resorted to a more permanent solution." Monica let that sink in. "You might want to consider that before you do something to upset our interests."

"You don't want to threaten my son," Lillian said dangerously. "Behind bars, he is more dangerous than your benefactor ever was behind the scenes."

"I'd really consider the precariousness of your position right now, Lillian," Monica warned.

"I can command an army. I've got one under my control right now," Lillian said. "Your benefactor may have watched presidents die. I've made them. What powers does he have now? To smoke in any government building he wants?"

Monica got right in her cousin's face. "He's not here. I am. And yes, even I'm aware, despite everything he's done, he won't be around forever. So I would watch my words very carefully. Particularly considering that he's realized he'll soon have to choose a successor."

Lillian's expression changed, to something that almost might be admiration. "Don't tell me you think you'll get it."

"I don't," Monica paused. "But there is something to be said to giving it to someone who's already halfway there. Who might be able to do good things…_ if_ she manages to keep the light show to a minimum." Monica gave a small smile. "Unlike him, I do believe in the value of family."

Supergirl was invulnerable to the extremes of cold. But even she couldn't help but shiver as she approached the door that was no doubt holding a lot of the Syndicate's secrets. "How long until you open this door?" she asked Winn.

"Thirty seconds."

"Hurry up. I don't know how much time I've got, and its going to be really hard explaining why I don't have a Haz-mat suit on."

At that moment, the door opened. Kara walked in, not entirely certain what she was going to see.

The room was even larger than it had appeared on the schematics. And inside were appeared to be at least a dozen tanks. But this was anything but an aquarium. "Holy shit," escaped her lips.

"Talk to me."

"I just walked into an X-File," she told him. And she had a pretty good idea what she was going to find even before she starting wiping away the condensation at the front of the tank. The fact that there were tubes attached running out of each tank gave her a pretty good idea. There was a face there – not one she recognized, but she knew what it was.

"Jonn, are you there?" she whispered.

"What is it, Supergirl?"

"The hybridization project that Mulder and Scully spent seven years trying to expose," she said softly. "They restarted. In bulk."

Then she went to another tank, because she saw that one of the forms was clearly female. "Oh my God," she whispered.

"What is it?"

She wiped away the fog to verify what she had a pretty good idea she was going to see. "One of the clones. It's Samantha Mulder."

There was silence at the 0ther end. They'd read the files. They knew very well what Fox had found in 1995, when what he thought was his sister had returned to him. "How many are there?" Winn asked.

"At least three or four. Here." Supergirl thought she had seen levels of depravity before, but this… this was a level that shocked her sensibilities. "How sure is he that she's dead?"

"He had her declared dead in 2000," Jonn said. "But that file read too much like a fairy tale even for an X-File."

Supergirl swallowed. "Do you think its possible she's still out there somewhere?"

"I don't think anybody knows." Winn admitted.

She recovered a little. "Jonn, get a team out here. Fast as possible."

"We have to do this carefully, " Jonn reminded her. "We can't alert the conspiracy –"

"These people didn't last this long to not know when they've been hacked," she said slowly. "even by us. Even if I get out of here cleanly, they'll figure it out, and then they'll clean up their tracks. Which, best case scenario, will mean there'll be a gas explosion in the building tomorrow night. _Maybe _it'll be empty when it happens."

"What are you doing in here?"

Kara whirled around. She'd been so captivated by what she was seeing, she hadn't bothered to mind her surroundings. Now there was a man in here with her.

"I can…" Her explanation died in her throat. No human could be walking around in these surroundings. But this man wasn't wearing a haz-mat suit. She got a good look at him. Six foot five, two hundred and fifty pounds, with a face that looked like it was chiseled out of granite. Scully may have killed one of them, but she was still sure she was looking at an alien bounty hunter.

They both reacted simultaneously. She flew at him, he charged at her. It didn't escape her attention that they arrived at the same destination virtually simultaneously.

"You're not supposed to be here," the bounty hunter snarled.

"Neither are you." They began to struggle, and even though she'd had no problem fighting aliens three times her size, they were meeting on about an even keel. Neither one could gain a clear advantage.

"So you're one of the last," the bounty hunter intoned. "We never got a chance before your planet was destroyed."

This was not something she wanted to hear, especially now. "This planet is under my protection," she said, hating the cliché but wanting to make her point clear nevertheless.

"We have conquered stronger planets than yours," he said. "And we will do the same to this one. " And as if to emphasize this, he threw into one of the tanks.

Supergirl knew she wasn't going to win a fair fight, so she decided to play dirty. She aimed her heat vision right at his chest. A second before it hit, she remembered what happened when you damaged these creatures, but she supposed it would only be dead to humans.

That was before her eyes started to burn. This wasn't anything like Kryptonite, but it was painful nevertheless.

"Foolish Kryptonian." The creature's intonation never changed, even when uttering the hoariest of clichés. Even though there was a hole in his chest dripping the toxin, Kara hadn't even seemed to slow him down.

Suddenly Kara remembered what she had read in the files. The toxin released through the bloodstream would thicken her blood, unless she could slow it down. And there had been a way to do just that. She blew her ice breath around the already freezing room, and almost instantly she began to feel better.

Getting out of here unheard and unseen was pretty much going to be impossible at this point. So she decided to stop trying to kill this creature, and get the hell out. Using her superspeed, she ran out of the room.

"Winn, forget subtlety. I need to find the nearest damn exit," she said into her earpiece.

"What the hell happened back there?" Jonn demanded.

"I'll tell you when I'm clear. Meantime, way out, please!"

Winn was calm enough to direct her to an emergency exit near the back of the building. Apparently, the bounty hunter wasn't following her. Either she'd done some significant damage to him, or he was reporting back to his masters. Whichever it was, she wasn't about to look a gift horse in the mouth.

She got to the exit, and didn't bother with the security code – she just flew right through it, and waiting until she had gained altitude before she bothered to talk to the DEO.

"Well, if we needed any confirmation that the Syndicate was still planning colonization, we just got it," Kara told them. "I just had my own encounter with one of their alien soldiers."

"You're sure it was one of the ones from the X-Files, and not some other species?" Alex asked.

"Let's see: huge build, super strength, their blood is green and it hurts like hell when you get exposed to it. Yeah, I'm gonna stick with my first guess."

"Whoa, hold on. You experienced the same reaction that humans did?" Jonn demanded.

"I don't know," Kara admitted. "But this wasn't like being exposed to Kryptonite. I didn't feel weaker, but it definitely hurt. I think I minimized exposure as much as I could, but given everything we know about it, we have to expect there might be side effects."

And then, as if the mere mention of it made it so, she felt like something burning within her. It was like her blood was starting to boil and congeal simultaneously. Her field of vision began to darken a little.

"Winn," and she could tell that her voice was starting to sound faint. "I need you to get a fix on my location fast."

"Kara! Are you all right?" Alex's professionalism had the hysteria that occurred whenever her sister was in danger.

"I'm going to stay airborne as long… as I can," she said. "It's getting harder to maintain…altitude."

She felt consciousness starting to fade despite her best efforts, and the last words she heard before she started to spiral were: "Supergirl! Report! Report!"

CATCO

"Well, we may still be in a basement office, but at least it's a much better building," Mulder told Scully.

It had taken four hours for them to get to National City. Cat had offered to check them into a luxury hotel (something both agents were more than willing to take her up on) but both had realized the importance of what was going and had said they needed to move on to the next phase.

Meeting them in the office that was the hub of Catco's internet service was James Olsen, who Cat Grant said had been read into what had been in the X-Files. "It's a privilege to meet you, Mr. Mulder," he told him.

"You have working relationship with two of the most heroic aliens working. We're the ones who should be honored," Scully told him, as they both shook his hand.

'And considering that the world's been blowing up the last few days, we're privileged you have the time to meet with two washed up former Feds," Mulder told him.

"Something I got used to when I worked for Perry White," James told them. "There's always a crisis going on somewhere. The important thing is to never lose focus. And this is important."

"So what's the next step?" Scully asked.

"That's up to you," Cat told them. "The DEO wants to meet with you. I believe the term Supergirl used was 'champing at the bit'."

Mulder and Scully exchanged another one of their looks. "Let them wait."

"You sure?" James asked.

"Right now, I'm not a hundred percent sure I even trust Supergirl," Mulder held up a hand to deflect. "I've seen what she's done, but speaking only from my personal experience, almost every alien I've met has been trying to kill me. And if our experience with aliens is piss-poor, my natural instinct is to never trust the government."

"Even the FBI?"

"_Especially _not the FBI," Scully spoke up. "There are trustworthy people in the Bureau, but the agency as a whole is corrupt and malignant. I can't imagine things have gotten better since the Patriot Act was signed."

"If you don't mind my saying, you chose a really weird field to get involved in if those are your beliefs," James told him.

"A thought that crossed my mind more than once when I was dealing with you," Cat said. "I would argue that now, more than ever, we need you back in the bureau."

"Changing the system from within didn't make much of a dent," Mulder said.

"How's changing it from without working?" Cat knew she might've gone too far, because she did something she rarely did – she retracted her previous statement. "I'm just saying, you didn't have much use for those costumed vigilantes that are everywhere these days. There's got to be some middle ground."

"And there is. We told you we'd be willing to have a meeting with the DEO," Scully told them. "We will, but on our terms, not theirs."

"Which are?"

"Who's the agent who convinced Skinner to hand over the X-Files?" Mulder asked.

James looked at Cat Grant, who gave a barely visible nod. "Her name is Alex Danvers." Another pause. "Kara's sister. She's one of their top field agents, and last I heard, was fairly high up in the DEO command structure."

"Is she our kind of people?"

James gave a small smile. "Yeah. She went to the mat for Supergirl more than once."

"And yet she had no idea what was in the files?" Scully asked.

Cat spoke up. "This may be the first time that I knew something before they did," she told them. "They weren't happy about that. For any number of reasons."

Mulder looked around. "Kara Danvers wouldn't happen to be here to speak up her sister, would she?"

A split-second look of concern crossed James' face. Cat, however, wasn't phased. "I sent her back early because, as you're well aware of, there's a story at least as big as you that we have to deal with right now."

"You sent her back to deal with Cadmus?" Mulder said in a perfectly neutral tone. "I thought our story was her baby."

"Unfortunately, the news world doesn't operate in a bubble," Cat said. "Half my board was raging at me for flying halfway across the country to deal with something that wasn't related to the biggest story in the world right now. We're facing an all-hands on deck scenario. The only reason James isn't in the middle of it right now is because he's spent the last forty-eight hours covering my ass."

James had recovered. "Which means whatever you're going to do, you'd better make up your mind quick. The DEO is already juggling the X-Files and Cadmus. Given the way things in National City operate, there's probably going to be some kind of metahumans super-villain tearing up mid-town any minute. All of which is a long-handed way of saying, Alex may well have her hands full."

Mulder had noticed the definite hesitation that James had taken. The suspicion that had been in his mind since Kara hadn't been present at their meeting earlier that day began to grow. Now, however, was not the time to say anything. "We'll put a pin in that for now." He looked at him. "Since Catherine has read you into this, I'm guessing you've at least had a glimpse at the files."

"The abridged version, which even you'd have to admit would need Cliff Notes," James told them. "I was as much taken by surprise by what was in there as Miss Grant and everyone else."

"Well, as someone who has been closely associated with not one but two heroes of extraterrestrial origin, I must ask a question I'm getting tired of repeating: is there anything in there that sounds remotely familiar?" Mulder asked.

"If there's one thing I've learned associating with Superman and Supergirl, it's that not all alien are alike," James paused. "However, there is something you should know before we go any further. There is a sizable alien community living in National City."

Scully and Mulder considered this for several seconds. "I can't believe I'm about to ask this question, but are they hostile or friendly?" Scully finally said.

"I think the word that would fit the most is incognito," James told them. "Most of them are humanoid life forms or have the ability to, pass, for lack of a better word."

"And I'm guessing the DEO maintains surveillance on all of them," Mulder said rhetorically.

"That is its mandate, as far as I know," Cat Grant said. "As someone who had real problems with the police state that emerged over the past fifteen years over its human citizens, I'm not much more comforted by the fact that our government has one of over ones that are, for lack a better term, from out of town."

"Somehow I doubt the ACLU feels the same way," Scully pointed out.

"As someone who spent seven long, and extremely frustrating years trying to convince this one," he gestured towards Scully affectionately, "that aliens even existed, I can't tell how much it bothers me that I can now literally go down to the corner bar and have a Bud with one."

"Actually, in a couple of places, some of them are manning the taps," James said sheepishly. "Be very careful when you ask for the house special around here."

Mulder sat down. "You never answered Scully's original question."

"It depends," James told him. "Most of them just want to get through the day without having to be disturbed. But you really don't know which ones are which until they've got a talon to your throat. I speak from way too much personal experience on that end."

"Then I think its time for the mountain to go to Mars, so to speak," Mulder told him.

"You want to see one of these places?"

"If the conspiracy is still active in some form," Scully said slowly, "and they've been considered destroyed far too many times for us to believe they're actually dead, they're probably monitoring these aliens themselves. Besides, to quote another great fringe, if we're to go hunting, we should where the ducks are."

Cat nearly cringed. "You really think Goldwater believed in aliens?"

"He was from that part of the country," Mulder said with a smile. "And he did fly a lot. But let's not bring politics into this. You want to find alien conspirators, you find some aliens first. Besides, maybe Supergirl will be having a drink there."

Supergirl had felt the aftereffects of Kryptonite more often than she had wanted to over the past year. As she regained consciousness slowly, she was pretty certain this wasn't anything like it.

Recovering from exposure to Kryptonite usually made you feel mortal – you felt nauseous, your head was spinning, and your skin felt like it was crawling. Being exposed to – whatever kind of alien's blood this was – had left her feeling hollow. There was a burning sensation around her eyes. And she felt like she needed to have her appendix taken out – which was odd, because Kryptonians didn't have them.

"Easy, Supergirl," She managed to focus her eyes. There was Alex. "How are you feeling?"

"Like I caught the Kryptonian version of shingles," she said slowly. "Where am I?"

"A DEO safehouse in Copenhagen," Alex said gently. "Wasn't hard to find you. Supergirl crashing into the reine Strasse in Nuremberg already has 800,000 hits on Youtube."

Kara blinked. "How long have I been unconscious?"

"About eight hours. It was a slow news day."

Kara caught the wink in her sister's tone. "Alex, I'm not in the mood for jokes."

"Good, because figuring out how to fix you wasn't exactly a barrel of laughs." Alex told her. "You looked like you were suffering from a low level radiation burn when we found you. Which could've raised a lot of questions in itself."

"How'd you figure it out?"

"Give the credit to a smart doctor." Alex said. "When you told us you ran into one of those alien bounty hunter, we went through the files to see if anybody had survived exposure to the toxin in their blood stream."

"I'm going to go out on a limb. Mulder was, and Scully figured out how to save him."

"Got in one. In 1995, Mulder, in his infinite wisdom, decided to try and chase down an alien in the Arctic Circle. He was exposed to the Bounty Hunter's blood, and by the time search-and-rescue found him, he was suffering from extreme hypothermia," Alex shook her head. "It's kind of becoming a pattern in these files: Mulder goes halfway around the world to chase aliens, and Scully has to use her medical degree to patch him up."

"Probably would have died long ago if it wasn't for her. " Supergirl paused. "So how'd she save him?"

"She figured out that the extreme cold was the only thing that was keeping the virus from killing him. By keeping him in the cooling tanks for twelve additional hours, she managed to neutralize the toxin. It took him a week to regain consciousness, though." Alex replied. "So we put into a cryonics chamber and pushed the temperature to sub-zero. That and Supergirl's natural immunities managed to do the same thing. You're going t0 need to stay off your feet for the next day or so, though."

"Me or Supergirl? Because my dance card is pretty full on both counts."

Alex looked around. "Kara Danvers will be fine, as long as she remembers who she is, and doesn't try to be anyone else."

Supergirl saw she was still in her costume. "Did the DEO raid the Strughold Company?"

"Right now, we're surreptitiously watching the building." Kara must have been able to give a wicked look despite her condition, because Alex wilted a little. "We can't give away the whole game yet. Soon as we do that, they will know the DEO is on to them, and they'll start cleaning up operations everywhere, not just in Munich."

There was logic in this. "But I went in civilian garb. What if they know I'm Supergirl?"

"There were no cameras in the room you were in. And Winn erased all the footage of your exit from the building. They know someone was there, but they don't know that Supergirl was there, much less Kara Danvers."

Alex's tone was reassuring and perfectly logical. Still Kara knew her sister well enough to know when she was withholding something. "We started this search one step behind. I think we may have to consider the possibility that someone in the DEO may be linked to this conspiracy."

"They don't necessarily need an inside man," With reluctance, Alex then told her about the connections that might exist between the NSA and the Cadmus blast.

"So Big Brother has been watching us." Kara said.

"In their defense, we're kind of Big Sister," Alex responded sheepishly. "Mulder and Scully are not going to be wild when they learn how the DEO handles operations."

"Maybe he'll change his mind when he learns the nature of the threat."

"_We _still don't know the nature of the threat," Alex reminded her. "But we're going to find out soon. Mulder and Scully have requested that I act as liaison between them and the DEO. Any advice?"

Kara knew how big this was. "Tread lightly. Miss Grant and I did a lot of groundwork convincing them that we're trustworthy. Scully might be willing to give you the benefit of the doubt – she was always the more practical of the two, according to the files – but Mulder has a lot of doubts."

"About what we're doing?"

"About the costumed heroes in a general. He's spent the last couple of years profiling us, and if he lost anything of his edge over the last fifteen years, I would hate to deal with him when he was at his sharpest. He knew everything about who I am except my name _before_ I walked in his door."

Alex had gotten a heads up about the profiling, but it was another thing to hear about it. "Do you think he knows?"

"No, but the fact that Kara Danvers wasn't meeting him with Supergirl probably didn't allay his suspicions." Kara started to struggle to her feet.

"Whoa, what part of taking it easy don't you understand?" Alex demanded.

"I'll take it easy, but we're getting on the same plane." Kara said slowly. "They need to see either Kara or Supergirl. And considering that these people might not trust if a shapeshifter should show up, I have to actually be there."

Alex knew better than to argue with her sister. "Let's just hope the engines hold out."

UNDISCLOSED LOCATION

"How did it go?"

Reyes worked for him, but she'd never been comfortable with him. "She's a Luthor. She may loathe Superman and everything he stands for, but at the end of the day, she still thinks her wealth and power make her just as invulnerable."

Looking more like an ancient crone even in his suit and tie, the old man nodded. "People like her have been around as long as the aliens. The wealthy have always felt in control, even before there was a word for wealth."

"I've appeased her, but even so, I think all we can buy is time before she strikes again."

"Time. The one commodity more valuable than money." He took a drag from his Morley and placed the butt in the tube in his neck. "Using it, we can find a way outmaneuver her."

"She's a Luthor. She was born thinking ten steps ahead."

"Then we'll just have to change the game entirely."


	10. Chapter 9

**Chapter 9**

**DAILY GRIND**

Mulder had wanted to go see the stomping grounds for aliens right away, but having been absent from the FBI routine for more than fifteen years had forced him to fall out of the habit of quick recovery from jet lag. About ten minutes after they headed to the hotel to change, he felt the last forty-eight hours with next to no sleep finally hit him, and he stumbled.

Scully reminded him that, unlike so many other occasions, the aliens weren't going to disappear if they got eight hours sleep. Even then, he might have argued the point, except for two reasons: one, they were staying in a much nicer hotel than the ones they had spent in their time in the Bureau (thank you, Cat Grant), and two, he would be able to share a bed with Scully. The latter didn't have any effect on their decision making process. Of course not.

The next morning, they got a call from Kara Danvers telling them that James had explained the conditions they had negotiated, and that she and her sister would meet them in a local coffee shop a couple of blocks from CatCo in an hour.

"She's okay with this?" Mulder was surprised.

"She's read the files, Mr. Mulder. If there's anyone who wants to get to the truth as much as you do, it's her." Kara assured him.

Mulder was actually moved beyond words to know that, even it was twenty years too late, somebody in the government actually cared about his life's work. He kept it to himself.

"You should also know there's been some movement on what you and Miss Grant discussed while we were still in D.C." Kara told him.

Suddenly, Mulder was on high alert. "You found something?"

"I think I'd rather tell you face to face."

"I didn't think paranoia was a contagious disease," Mulder joked.

"Let's just say I'm inclined to trust Edward Snowden, and would rather be safe than sorry when it comes to this."

They made their way to the Daily Grind, where Kara was waiting with a dark-haired woman a few years older than her. There was clear affection between the two, but Mulder couldn't see any immediate family resemblance

"This is my sister, Alex. She's the senior agent at the DEO."

After introductions were made, Scully looked at Kara. "Are you all right? You look a little pale."

"Something on the flight back didn't agree with me," Kara told her. "I'm sure I'll be alright soon."

Mulder noted her choice of words, but decided to say nothing. "You said there'd been some movement on what Cat Grant and I talked about."

"Supergirl investigated the Strughold Compound. And based on what she told us, it appears that the conspiracy has resumed. More than likely, it never really stopped." Alex hesitated. "And I'm afraid it may be far more personal for you than I thought."

A sinking feeling formed in Mulder's chest. "What did she find?"

Alex Danvers told everything that Supergirl had found. Then she got right to the guts of it. "Mr. Mulder, are you sure your sister is dead?"

Mulder had made peace with what had befallen Samantha for sixteen years. Maybe because there had been some part of him that had just wanted to believe she was at peace. But even if he had been willing to accept that his sister was gone, he had to admit he had done so by pretty much by writing off everything he had seen that the conspiracy had done and that he had seen in the five years prior to that. The clones that had been killed by the Bounty Hunter, the younger versions of her he had seen in those fields in Canada, that woman that Smoking son of a bitch had introduced to him when he was at his lowest point. That had been evidence, and he'd never given it a moment's thought after what he had seen in California sixteen years ago. All of that had suggested that something involving Samantha had been part of the conspiracy's DNA for decades. Why had he just let it go?

"Mulder," Scully was looking at him.

He gathered himself. "Agent Danvers, it is my firm belief that my sister is dead. But…" He trailed off. "You read the files?" Alex nodded. "Then you know as well as I do that believing someone dead doesn't mean they actually are."

"I've seen more than a few examples of that myself, " Alex said slowly. "Let's start with the simplest explanation first."

"Ah, Ockham's Razor of Limited Imagination," Scully said.

"You have to remember where I work," Alex told them. "In this case, the simplest explanation is that the conspiracy, after kidnapping your sister in 1973, extracted DNA from her during the test, and merged with existing alien tissue to create genetic clones."

Mulder went very pale. "Are you all right, Mulder?" Scully put her hand on his.

"Yeah, I'm sorry, I" he paused. "I knew that they must've done horrible things to her over the time that she was taken. I guess I just compartmentalized it."

"It's easy to understand," Kara said. "It's horrible to think about, especially considering you and Scully both went through it to some extent."

"I never thought of it that way," Scully said.

"I have to ask," Mulder said slowly. "The agency you work for. Do you have much experience dealing with abductees?"

Alex considered this. "The agency's only been around since 2002. We tend to deal more with actual aliens then the people they affect. But I did some digging. Before I joined, they did deal with it. And you're not going to be happy with how it was handled."

"Anything would be better than being ignored," Mulder said.

"You'd think so," Alex took a deep breath. "You know how so many of the sexual assault victims were handled for a long time by incompetent police? Apparently, there was quite a lot of 'blame the abductee' in the interviews. "

Kara looked shocked at this. "That doesn't sound like how the DEO does business."

"The old regime was more based on information gathering then they were about what was left behind in the wake," Alex said. "They would interrogate the subjects for hours, demand information on the nature of the tests were performed, and perform hypnosis and other invasive procedures to find out exactly what kind of alien was performing the tests."

Scully was genuinely appalled. "Did these people actually volunteer this information?"

"A lot of the time they didn't." Alex looked really apologetic. "The Patriot Act gave a lot of cover for detaining citizens without cause. And that's what they with the people who _survived _the abductions. There are people whose bodies were never returned to their families after they disappeared. "

Mulder was looking genuinely pissed now. "And you have no problem working with these people?"

"There was a major regime shift three years before I started working at the DEO," Alex told them. "But you're right, Mr. Mulder. I have no excuse. And any apologies I can offer would be hollow. The only things that have really changed is that we don't deal with abductees any more. And if you're not wild about our surveillance state, you're not exactly going to be thrilled how we are monitoring aliens."

Scully was maintaining her usual detachment, but Mulder could tell she was just as furious as he was. "I always tried to offer some kind of restraint when it comes to Mulder's sometimes headstrong approach to how he would pursue the truth. So I need you to tell me why we shouldn't walk across the street, go in the elevator, and give Cat Grant what appears to be the biggest abuse of agency power since Abu Gharib."

Alex considered this for a moment. "Why did you work for the Bureau for so long?"

Mulder seemed a little nonplussed by the change of subject. "I wanted to expose the truth to the public. I believe the people have a right to know about what their government has been doing to them."

"And yet you chose to do so by working for an agency that is named for a man who for his tenure as director abused his power to blackmail those in high office and ordinary citizens." Alex said slowly. "A man whose bigotry was such he wiretapped a movement trying to bring about equality. And you know from your own experience that it was more concerned with protecting itself than protecting its citizens."

Mulder briefly wondered if Alvin Kersh had somehow become Director by now. "You don't have to deal me how much blood is on the Bureau's hands. I was almost a casualty for it. So was Scully."

"I wish everything in the world was seen in terms of black and white. But I don't think that kind of world ever existed." She exchanged a brief but noticeable look with her sister. "There are millions who consider Supergirl a hero. But you're not the only one who considered that she could be a threat."

Mulder had the good grace to look ashamed. "I'm starting to reconsider that." He paused. "We've gotten a little off topic. Is there anything in the DEO that could possibly pertain to what happened to my sister?"

Alex paused for a second. "In the broadest of terms, maybe. There are reports of much what you found in the X-Files. People who were abducted multiple times, and had horrible experiments performed. Extraction of fetal tissue. Radiation testing. Drilling into every available orifice. But there is one crucial difference. In none of those cases was anything implanted into the body."

"You're sure?" Scully said.

"I cherry-picked more than two dozen files over a ten year period. None of them had anything resembling a microchip in their bodies." Alex paused. "Then again, this is the twenty-first century. Technology doesn't have to be visible anymore."

"That's a frightening thought," Kara said.

"Here's another one," Mulder said slowly. "That kind of experimentation was omnipresent during the life of the Syndicate. Maybe, after they were burned alive, they decided to change their approach. When they returned", he swallowed, "the people I was abducted with, they sure as hell didn't intend for them to be human anymore."

All of them knew enough about the conspiracy to know what that might mean. "What are we dealing with, Mr. Mulder?" Kara asked. "Morphing aliens. Some kind of supersoldier. What?"

"You're the experts on aliens," Scully said. "You tell us."

DEO WAR ROOM

"Not that I doubt your leadership, but won't you get in trouble with D.C. for passing on what they had about alien abductions to Mulder and Scully?" Winn asked.

Jonn shook his head. "Honestly, I don't care what happens. What the DEO did in the name of protecting Earth – against us – is by far the most shameful thing this department's ever done."

"But you weren't responsible for any of it. " Winn told him.

"I wasn't. But the real Hank Henshaw was." Jonn assumed his Martian form. "That was part of the reason I took his form. From that point on, we did a much softer approach. Not that it mattered much. After Superman appears, the majority of the races we investigation stopped with the experiments."

"Maybe they decided that they didn't have to hide anymore." Winn thought for a second. "Or maybe they found another approach."

He began typing on his keyboard. "What if we've been going about this wrong way? We've been looking for aliens kidnapping human subjects. We forgot that they were consorting with some form of the government when they were doing the lion's share of their work."

"What are you checking?"

"When Mulder and Scully were investigating Jeremiah Smith, they found that six other men baring his name were working at the Social Security Administration." Winn told him. "Apparently they were compiling huge amounts of data that corresponded with the Smallpox Eradication Program."

Jonn resumed Henshaw's form. "Smallpox comes up quite a few times in the X-Files."

"And where would you do if you wanted to hide research looking into a disease that, even though it's nearly been eradicated, has been considered a potential biological threat for decades?"

"The CDC."

"You always spoil my best tricks, but you're the boss man, so you have the right," Winn told him. "Considering their cover was effectively blown in 1996, I don't expect to find that Smith's going to be working under that name. And if he is another shape-shifter, well, it's going to be like looking for a grain of sand on a beach. But considering we don't have much in the way of alternatives right now…"

He finished typing. "I'm running a search algorithm, seeing if I can locate anybody in any of the departments that might meet our criteria. My usual magic's not going to work miracles, so this is going take at least four or five hours."

"I'll see if I can get some movement in the bureaucratic direction." Jonn said. "I'll contact Atlanta."

"May be a long shot, but start by going through anything pertaining to bees." Winn said. "The early plans for colonization involved an outbreak of this virus in that form. I guess disguising it as Lyme disease would've been too simple for the shadow government."

Considering that this should have been the realization of a lifelong dream, Mulder was beginning to feel that everything about alien encounters was becoming remarkably disappointing.

It was one thing to have aliens becoming so much of the newscycle that Superman foiling Lex Luthor barely rated breaking into local news coverage. It was another to have Cat Grant admit that she'd been wrong when she'd chosen to ignore his life's work. But now, after all these years of searching for aliens in every corn field, warehouse, army base and grain silo in the country…

"_This _is the number one alien hangout in National City?" he said to Scully. "It looks like a place that wouldn't rate two stars on Yelp."

Alex was beginning to wonder if bringing Mulder down here to ask questions was a mistake. She wasn't sure whether Mulder was angry about the information she'd given him about the DEO's record, or if he was just cranky about the way his life's ambitions were turning out. Whatever the reason, he'd been bitching ever since he'd seen the exterior of the place, and he was starting to get loud.

"Mr. Mulder, these … clients aren't exactly welcome to humans being here in the first place," she said as sotto voice as she could. "And they have to deal with a lot of bigotry not just from the people on this planet who have a 'get off my lawn' attitude towards them, but from well-meaning who expect them to fly or turn rocks into diamonds on command."

Mulder looked at Alex. "As someone who was literally trying to find extraterrestrials before you were born, I think you're really not getting my problem. "

"Mulder." Usually Scully's tone was enough to calm down or at least warn him to do so. It was very telling of where they were he basically shrugged her off.

"Forests in Oregon. The Arctic fields. Train cars in Pennsylvania. I have been beaten up, shot at, poisoned, drugged, had brain surgery performed on me pretty much without anesthetic, infected by them, abducted, experimented on by them, and literally killed by them." Mulder said slowly. "You'd think that would have been enough proof for the powers that be, but no, there was no hard evidence. Ten years of my life searching for them, and getting nothing in return but censure, criticism, imprisonment, and a literal death sentence. So you'll forgive me that after all of this time trying to convince the world that aliens exist, I now can just go into a restaurant and ask for the non-Earthling section!"

"Could you just give us a minute, please?" Scully all but pulled her partner into the restrooms. It didn't escape Mulder's notice that there were at least six different stalls – three of which had symbols that would have been more familiar to Carl Sagan.

"You know, if you were like this went out on your own, I'm actually kind of glad you spent half our time together ditching me," Scully said, only half in jest.

"Maybe I was wrong to agree to Cat Grant's terms," Mulder said instead.

That stopped Scully cold. "Mulder, this is your life's dream right here."

"And you're okay with that, Scully?" Bewilderment – a tone that Scully had almost never heard in Mulder's voice in a quarter of a century – was clearly there. "A week before I was taken, you told me that the endeavor was more important then the goal."

It took Scully a couple of minutes to realize what he was talking about. The genie they had found in a trailer park. The one that Mulder had supposedly gotten three wishes from – and even after all this time, he'd never told her what his third wish had been.

"Well, Mulder, the search is important. It's just that the goal has changed," she reminded him. "So you don't have to convince people that aliens exist anymore. What you do have to do is convince people that there's still a threat out there that they're not aware of."

Mulder considered this. "The DEO says that they believe. Shouldn't we just go home?"

"They don't have any proof. The files tell a story, but that's all it is. We need evidence. That's what we're here to get."

Mulder spent a long moment thinking. "Well, if we don't have proof, and they don't have proof, that leaves only one other group that we can turn to."

'I know Mulder's a legend, and I'm trying to cut him all the slack I can for his being out of service for fifteen years, but he's really acting like he wants me to hit him," Alex complained.

"Better you than me." The sisters exchanged a smile. "You've got to give him some latitude, Alex. I imagine Steve Rogers would have similar growing pains if he were to show up in Times Square today.

"Captain America was a myth, Kara, but I see your point. " Alex heaved a sigh. "I realize we're asking a lot of him, and I realize that we've thrown a lot at him, but if he doesn't start trying to adjust, we're going to have problems."

Just then, Mulder and Scully reappeared. "I'm sorry that I keep botching my approach to all this," he told the two of them.

"It's okay. This would be a huge adjustment for anyone," Kara said quickly.

"You say this is a place for alien intel," Mulder was focusing on Alex. "Who is your most reliable informant?"

Alex frowned for a minute. "That depends on what you want to know."

"This is going to require tact and diplomacy, two skills I never had in bulk when Scully I were working the X-Files," Mulder sounded a little sheepish now. "This place, I guess you call it Casablanca, minus the Nazis?"

"I really wouldn't use _Men In Black _as your go to reference," Alex said.

"I don't know see why not. You have before," Kara said.

"Fair point." Alex said. "It's a sloppy metaphor, but I can live with it."

"Good, 'cause I'm about to ask you to use a sloppier one," Mulder told her. "I need you to find an informant who's been around since at least the 1940s, who has a knowledge of shapeshifters, and might have worked with some _actual _Nazis."

Now the sisters exchanged a look. "We know a lot of aliens, but this place isn't Wikipedia." Alex said slowly. "You can't just mention search terms, and get a hit"

"If the job were that easy, they wouldn't pay you the big bucks," Scully piped up. "And right now, this is your area of expertise far more than it is ours. Is there anyone who might be a generalist?"

Alex thought for a moment. "As a matter of fact, there might be someone. And as an added bonus, she's not even an alien."

"I think I hit the mother lode," Winn set about ninety minutes after he had begun running the algorithm. "God bless social media, and it's propensity to bring out the world's greatest idiots."

"What did you find?" Jonn asked.

"When the anti-vaccination fervor began in earnest a few years back, a lot of scientists went on record as to why that would be a bad idea, because you know, they prevent diseases," Winn told him. "But only one scientist actually went on TV to speak in favor of it."

"I'm kind of afraid to see who they got,"" Jonn asked.

"A doctor named Everett Sayre. His major advocacy is that because so many of the diseases that vaccines have eradicated no longer exist, it doesn't make any sense to vaccinate against them any more." Winn shook his head. "Is there a number for absurdity higher than a Catch-22?"

Jonn frowned. "Where did he get his degree?"

"Oxford. He majored in immunology. He also made the dean's list at Johns Hopkins. And well before the flawed Lancet study was published, the one that started the fervor, he was advocating for the destruction of the UN's supply of such diseases as rinderpest, typhoid, and smallpox."

"How does he link to the Syndicate?"

"Probably family ties. His great-aunt was Bonita Charne-Sayre. She was also an immunologist who studied diseases like smallpox. More importantly, she died in a supposed riding incident in Charlottesville in 1996." Winn paused. "According to the files Cat Grant provided for us, she was one of the people who had knowledge of a virus that very well could've been extraterrestrial in origin."

"Did Mulder and Scully link her to the conspiracy?"

"Not directly, but the implication is pretty strong that the 'accident' was the work of a Russian assassin who had ties to Alex Krycek, and he was neck deep into it right until he died."

"Any evidence besides conjecture that this Everett Sayre is behind this?"

"I'll keep digging. But we know the Syndicate was a family enterprise. And these guys could be lazy."

That was a bit gauche, considering that Mulder's father had also worked for the Syndicate, however unwillingly. But it was a valid point, considering what Jonn had read about what the Syndicate had done with their families to start all of the evil that had led to the original conspiracy.

"You get anything on your end?" Winn asked.

"Atlanta didn't have anything on record, so I tried a different angle," Jonn told him. "I looked in Canada, where Smith told Mulder, and he found those clones of Samantha Mulder. I had them run facial recognition software of Samantha Mulder, both the girl version that was found there, and the woman that claimed to be his sister the previous year."

"Any hits?"

"Yeah, fourteen of them. Most of them were from footage in the mid 1990s. But there was a more recent one. In 2011, there was an incident in Vancouver. A children's picnic was interrupted when a swarm of bees attacked. Fifteen students were brought to a local ER with bee stings. While the doctors were performing triage, a dark-haired woman came running in, and claimed that the children had been misdiagnosed, and that if they didn't starting treating them for smallpox, they would be dead within hours."

Winn sat up. There was a file describing this exact scenario in Mississippi in the spring of 1997. "What happened?"

"She was dismissed as a lunatic. But within three hours, several of the children did begin demonstrating symptoms." Jonn looked grim. "Ten of them died."

"And the woman?"

"She gave a false name, and by the time the local authorities were contacted, she had disappeared. But the security cameras got a picture." Jonn took out his phone. "Now, here's the wrinkle. The facial recognition software only can give an eighty percent certainty that this was one of the Samantha clones."

"Why aren't they sure?"

Jonn handed his phone over in response, and Winn got it instantly. It looked like a Samantha Mulder clone, but that woman had been thirty at the oldest. The woman in the picture was clearly in her mid-forties.

"Did you buy that file in which Mulder said his sister 'vanished into starlight'? " Winn asked.

"It didn't sound so much like an X-File, as the fantasy of a man who wanted to put his sister to rest," Jonn answered. "Particularly a man who thought he might be dying himself."

"I'll run the information we have on Samantha Mulder through computer imaging, but I can only think of one reason why there'd be a clone that looks that aged," Winn told him.

"Samantha Mulder's alive."

Alex had only known Maggie Sawyer for a couple of weeks, but she was beginning to think that she was at least as knowledgeable about aliens as anyone who wasn't working for the DEO. The fact that she said she got along better with aliens than people was actually a bonus, though she had held off from telling Mulder and Scully this.

As it turned out, Maggie didn't need an introduction as to who Mulder and Scully were. She actually knew about them – only from a different source.

"You know John Doggett?" Scully asked amazedly.

"I did a stint with NYPD three years back," Maggie told them. "We were working on narcotics bust, and we actually did quite a few stakeouts with his task force. "

"He shared his opinions on extraterrestrials with you?" Mulder asked.

"Well, Superman had been around for about a year. I'd known about aliens a little longer than that, but I was still kind of shocked when he raised the subject." Maggie looked at Alex. "The Lieutenant didn't seem to be the kind of guy who believed in sci-fi movies, so I was shocked to learned he'd actually spent a couple of years chasing aliens before it was, you know, stylish."

"He admitted it?" Scully shot her the brow. "It took me six months to get him to just say the word 'alien'.

"Really?" Mulder said. "It took you six years."

"Lt. Doggett admitted he'd had trouble believing in anything paranormal," Maggie went on. "Said the only reason he was acknowledging it now was that Superman pretty much meant the world had to accept it, which was the only reason he was."

"So what did he think we'd been chasing all those years?" Mulder was actually curious.

"Oh, he knew they were aliens. He just couldn't admit it to himself," Maggie replied.

"Did he go into detail about anything else?" Alex asked.

"Not really. Oh, he admitted that there were stories to tell, but he made it clear that one of two things would happen if I repeated them, even in a post-Superman world," Maggie hesitated. "My career would end up in the toilet, or I'd end up in the morgue. "

"You might want to take him seriously on that," Mulder told her grimly. "We're exhibit A, and I had a drawer full of Exhibit B in the Bureau."

Maggie looked at them. "Every time I go out on the streets, I risk my life. Same as you did." She gave a small smile. "And I like working the streets. You meet a lot of interesting people."

A small flutter – almost indistinguishable – went through Alex's stomach. Best to stomp on it for now. "Do you know anything that might be able to help us?" she asked. Mulder and Scully then gave a brief description of what they were looking for.

Maggie frowned. "Most of the aliens I deal with tend to want to avoid humans. And that was before the Cadmus blast. A lot of aliens have blood that's toxic to humans as a matter of course. But as to the last bit – aliens who have a healing touch – I might actually be able to with that one."

Now was not the time for Mulder or Scully to imply that there was an excellent chance that the Bounty Hunter and Jeremiah Smith were, at the very least, members of the same species. "What do you know?" Scully asked.

"In one of the more rundown sections of National City, there's a free clinic. Most of the time they deal in the kind of medicine that so many urban clinics do. " Maggie paused. "But whenever somebody is on death's door, and the nearest ER is too far away, people will go into the back room. In that room is an old man who they say can work miracles. All he has to do is put the palm of his hand on you."

It sounded like the kind of thing that Smith would be doing nearly twenty years after he'd appeared in that restaurant in D.C. more than twenty years ago. "You ever see this man?" Scully asked.

"No, but I know where the clinic is." Maggie looked at Mulder and Scully. "I can't guarantee you it's the alien you're looking for."

"That's alright, Miss Sawyer," Mulder told her. "In this case, close may be good enough."

UNDISCLOSED LOCATION

The people who gathered were not the same old men who had been part of the Consortium. For starters, most of them were younger, some even in their mid-thirties. And there were half a dozen women among the men now. Some might call this progress. Dana Scully would not have. Especially if she knew who was leading the discussion.

"You assured me that your facilities were secure, Conrad," Reyes was berating Strughold.

"Our security was protected from the breach of any humans," Strughold was saying. "Whoever got inside and fought off our hunter was no human. And there's only one conclusion that can be drawn from that."

There was general anger expressed at this. "How did Supergirl become aware of our affairs?" one of the senior members of the Council raged.

"I can think of an obvious explanation," Strughold fixed Reyes with a glare.

Monica remained calm. "Our man in the FBI says that the X-Files haven't been approached since he had them shut down."

"Mulder and Scully have always been capable of finding allies in the most remote of places," a pale looking blonde said.

"You should know. You were once one of them, Marita," Monica sneered.

Covarrubias didn't bother to deny the charge. "And your superior knew that there was a risk in leaving them alive all these years. The whole world is willing to believe in aliens and conspiracies theories. Hell, I can tune my radio to one every five minutes."

"You're blaming him for talk radio?"

"I'm blaming him for not lancing a boil when he had the chance. We could handle Mulder and Scully. How do you suggest we handle a superhero, much less one who has an arm of the government working with her?"

"If there's one thing we've learned over the last few years, it's that superheroes are far from invulnerable. And that there are always checks to the governments powers."

One of the more senior members of the Council spoke up. "Your superior always thought that problems could be – reconciled with enough bullets, but he always had a blind spot for those two. We're past that now. If Mulder and Scully find even the smallest of soapboxes for the briefest of times…"

"They won't." Monica said firmly.

Strughold looked at them. "How? We are powerful, but we can not shut down the Internet."

"We're not going to silence them. We're going to buy them off."

"Mulder couldn't be bought." Covarrubias reminded them. "Not with anything less than the truth."

"That was before we had the one thing that they want more than that." Monica told them. "His sister."


	11. Chapter 10

**CHAPTER 10**

**NORLISS CLINIC**

Maggie hadn't been lying about the area where the clinic was located. It was in the section of National City that Mulder had basically accused Kara of not spending nearly enough time a few days ago. There were crack dens and gang markers and sneakers on cell towers. Come to think of it, when _was _the last time she had come down to this area? Kara couldn't remember, which meant she never had. She was reminded of a joke she'd once heard from a police reporter: "If a drug dealers falls in Gotham, and Batman doesn't come, did that drug dealer actually die?" Well, she hadn't been here, and she had superhearing.

"Is there some kind of secret handshake you need to get it?" Mulder asked Maggie.

"Works better if you use your decoder ring." Maggie said with a bit of snark.

"Yeah, I get it. I've been off the street for fifteen years. You needn't remind me."

"In all seriousness, Mr. Mulder, this is going to take a bit of work. You're the wrong age and race as most of this clinic's clientele," Maggie told him. "They don't like it when I show up, either, and I least have a little credibility."

"All right, beauty before age. What magic trick are you going to use?" Scully asked.

"I have an idea. But I can assure, you're not going to like it." Maggie then explained what she had in mind.

"You're right. That's a terrible idea," Alex said. "Besides, aren't these guys qualified at telling a fake injury from a real one?"

Maggie looked at Scully. "Aren't you a doctor?"

"Yes. Which means I can think of a hundred possible ways this can go south." Scully reminded her.

Kara had been quiet through this. "I'll do it," she finally said.

"Mulder and Scully at least have law enforcement training," Maggie was clearly worried about this herself. "I have real issues with this whole thing, but I sure as hell am not going to take responsibility for a civilian getting hurt."

"Kara, you really shouldn't get involved in this," Alex said slowly, and only slightly concerned. "I only brought you because Mulder and Scully insisted on it. You've already gone above and beyond the call."

Mulder had remained utterly silent through all this. His eyes had the same laser intensity that had no doubt paralyzed so many suspects. "You're sure about this, Miss Danvers?" he said quietly.

"We need to get in there," Kara said. "And this is the safest way to get it done. Physical hurt may be one, but emotional trauma, that carries a lot of weight."

"You sure you want Scully to do this?" Maggie asked.

"She shot me once, and I was fine," Mulder replied. "Believe me, if there's anyone I trust your sister's life with, it's her."

"You'd better," Alex said casually. "Because if anything goes wrong here, I will make it my life's ambition to make sure what the aliens spent three months doing to you as the equivalent of child's play. And yes, Mr. Mulder, I know a lot of ways to inflict pain on creatures with a much higher tolerance for it than you have."

Mulder's face remained perfectly stoic. Scully, however, who had spent decades studying every nuance of her partner, could see that his Adam's apple twitched. Alex Danvers had thrown the fear of God into him – not a bad trick for a lifelong agnostic.

"Then let's hope things go well for both our sakes," was all he said.

"Help us, please!"

The hammering at the door was enough to wake the dead, but the dead didn't usually come this far out. Clarence Nash made his way to the front door, and looked through the peephole.

A middle-aged man with a face that looked like it had been carved out of a mountain was standing there. In his arms was a blondish woman in her twenties, who looked incredibly paled. There was blood on his shirt, and blood pooling around her stomach.

Clarence yanked the door open. "What happened?"

"Our car – broke down a few blocks. We couldn't – get cell service. Kara – I went looking – I should never –" The man was having a hard time getting putting two words together.

This wasn't the usual class of customer they got, but it was a close second. "Get in here," he said.

The man came practically carrying the woman – Kara – in his arms. "Calm down, sir, I need you to tell me what happened."

"I – I went – to look for – help, and when I got back- this man was standing over her. I told her to just give – up – the money, but—" The man was near tears.

By now, Clarence had managed to guide him towards the bed. Very reluctantly, the man put her on the bed. He pulled back her shirt to reveal a couple of fairly deep stab wounds. "Sir, I need you to step back," he said gently.

The man did so very reluctantly. "Miss, miss, can you hear me?"

"W—what h—happen—ed?" she said.

Clarence had been a medic in Afghanistan before he had started working here, which barely scratched the surface of the kind of work he'd seen in National City, particularly over the past couple of years. This, at least, looked fairly traditional compared some of the stuff he'd seen. Some junkie had probably come up to her, tried to take her money, and had panicked when she hadn't reacted fast enough. He'd used a knife instead of a gun, which was a bit old-school, but not unheard of.

He used his equipment – the best he could get, which wasn't much – and found that her blood pressure was uneven, and her pulse was thready. When he tried to gather the depths of the wound, he was puzzled - they didn't seem that deep, but there was a lot more blood than he expected.

"Sir, um, what's your name?"

The man swallowed. "Fox. William Fox."

"Mr. Fox, your friend—"

"She's my daughter," Mr. Fox took a deep breath. "We were coming to look at colleges, and we got lost."

Clarence thought the story was genuine, but he'd heard a lot of stories that sounded real in the years he'd been here. "Sir, I think we need to call an ambulance."

"I—is it that bad?"

"It doesn't seem like whoever it was struck any major arteries, but considering where she was hit, I think she needs emergency care, and she's going to need a transfusion." Clarence told him gently.

"Oh, God," Fox went over to the side of the clinic, and put his head in his hands. "Can you do something for her here? I mean, I don't want her to be in any more pain than she has to be."

"Does she have any allergies?"

Fox hesitated. "I don't know. She hasn't been in the hospital since she was a baby. Healthy as a horse. All the luck…" He put his hands over his face.

"Well, I think that we can make sure that her luck holds, Mr. Fox."

"You're taking care of my angel. So please, call me William."

Despite the direness of the situation, Scully couldn't help but give a small smile. First or last, Mulder just couldn't stand the name 'Fox'.

"Well, the transmitter's working," Alex said. "Shame it doesn't get us any closer to the miracle man. You sure he's even in there?"

"From what I know, this guy never leaves the building," Maggie told him. "Clarence brings him food and clothes."

"How long has he been there?" Scully asked.

"Well, the clinic's been there for three years. I'm amazed he hasn't gone stir crazy."

"If this is the alien I think it is, he's used to spending long periods of time in hiding," Scully told them. She hesitated. "Of course, that doesn't necessarily mean it's the same one."

"Have you ever actually seen him?" Alex pressed.

"No, but if he's the kind of alien you're telling me about, the actual description could be irrelevant," Maggie reminded them.

Scully couldn't argue with that, though it didn't help matters that this gave this alien the description of an urban legend. Then again, that was a lot of the work on the X-Files had involved – proving that they weren't legends.

"You got anything on the layout yet?" she asked Alex, who'd been looking through her PDA.

"It's an old building, not much renovation done in twenty years," Alex said slowly. "But according to the blueprints, the clinic only takes up the first floor. The basement, someone did renovation there in the last couple of years."

"There's a side door somewhere," Maggie said. "How do you want to handle this?"

Scully hesitated. "Alex and I'll go. Let us know if things start to go south with Mulder and Kara."

"You sure?"

Alex nodded. "You need to keep your relationship with them open. I'm the government bureaucrat, and Scully may know this guy."

"You're not giving the old 'plausible deniability argument, are you?" Maggie chuckled.

"I worked for the government for more than ten years, and I never got to use that line," Scully admitted.

"YOLO?" Maggie said.

"Not if you work on the X-Files."

"So tell me," Scully asked as they started searching the alley, "was helping us the only reason you called on Detective Sawyer?"

Alex Danvers didn't even slow down for a moment while searching. "Why wouldn't it be?"

"I may have been out of practice for the last fourteen years, but I'm an expert at knowing when two law enforcement officers are attracted to each other."

It took Alex a lot of effort to avoid knocking over a garbage can. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"I'm also a world class expert at being in denial – and suppressing those feelings until it's almost way too late," Scully pressed.

There was little point in arguing that, and Alex did want to talk to someone about it – inappropriateness of the time and place non-withstanding. "It's weird. I'm twenty-seven, this is only the third time I've seen… Maggie, but I can't remember feeling about this for anyone." She hesitated. "Certainly not any man."

Scully considered this. "I come from a different era of law-enforcement," she told her. "When I was in the Academy, I had an affair with one of my instructors, which had it become public knowledge, would've ended it with me being drummed out, and him getting some kind of mark on his record. Before that, I had an affair with one of my teachers at med school. " She paused. "He was married, and had a daughter. He left his wife and moved to DC for me, but I didn't learn about it until nearly a decade after the affair ended. You can understand why I tread so lightly with my actual soul mate."

"That may have been the biggest mystery in those entire files," Alex said. "Werewolves and alien conspiracies are nothing, but for seven years, you shared the same office – hell, practically the same mind, and neither of you did anything about it until the last few months?"

It was hard to tell in the dark, but Alex thought Scully might've been blushing a little. "The argument was, it was against Bureau policy. Considering that we spent our entire careers in the Bureau pissing on almost every other regulation in the book, I think we may have been in the worse case of denial, period. Hell, Cat Grant could see after five minutes."

Alex could see it after three, but they'd clearly spent at least a decade making up for lost time. "Any advice?"

Scully shrugged. "She clearly seems to like you. There isn't some ridiculous bureaucratic nightmare if you do get entangled. Carpe diem."

Alex still hesitated. "And the other part?"

"The hell with the other part," Scully said.

At that moment, Alex saw something that shouldn't have been there. Everything in this alley looking dingy and dirty. So did one of the walls – but it had clearly been painted. "I think we found what we were looking for."

"Shame Supergirl isn't here to push it open," Scully said.

Now Alex raised an eyebrow. "You don't yell for her if you have trouble opening a jar of pickles. Besides, I've been training for this kind of thing. What I am worried about is if we get open, and we trigger some kind of alarm."

"You really think this kind of clinic some kind of laser security?"

"I know you don't just have a secret door in an alley, and hope that no one stumbles on to it," Alex reminded her. "Especially if you're trying to protect someone like your Jeremiah Smith."

She took out her earpiece. "Winn, you covering this?"

"It's not Fort Knox, but there is something a little fancier then for this part of town," Winn said into it. "I should be able to override it in about a minute."

"Any readings beyond our friends?"

"Just one heat signature. And he just seems to be waiting there."

Scully had a wistful look on her face, which Alex noticed. "You okay?"

"Sorry. I'm just remembering some very dear friends." She shook it off. "Ask him if he can override security without making it look like its been overridden."

"You hear that?" Alex said.

"With my eyes closed."

Scully walked over to Alex. "I want to go in alone," she said.

"You sure that's a smart idea?"

"No, but it's the right call. Besides, there's a real chance he knows me. And even if he doesn't, I still owe at least one of them a whopping big apology."

Mulder was waiting for a signal from Detective Sawyer: a text message where she would confirm whether or not Jeremiah Smith – whichever one of them it was – was actually in the building.

The wounds that Scully had inflicted on Kara Danvers were superficial, but would continue to bleed until they were properly cauterized. Still, he wondered how much more time they could afford to spend before Nash figured out that something was amiss. Scully was good, but her main skill was healing, not inflicting wounds.

His cell beeped. _Good, we can worry about the next step._

Except the message wasn't from Sawyer. It was from an unknown caller. No message, just a JPEG file.

A warning bell went off in Mulder's head, telling him that nothing good could come from this. Yet when it came to seeking the truth in the unknown, he couldn't look away. He opened the file.

And felt his heart skip a beat.

It was the footage of a woman, late forties, early fifties. She had dark hair which had patches of grey in it She had hazel eyes. It was a face he hadn't seen in nearly twenty years, but he still recognized it instantly.

It was his sister. Or at least, what the clone of her would've looked like in twenty years.

But that wasn't what was alarming. She was holding up a copy of the Daily Planet. Today's date was on it. And there was clearly a gun to her head.

Now the bell was turning into a siren. He had been led down this path how many times before? Even if he accepted that his sister was dead, he had never ruled out the possibility that there might be clones of her out there, still walking the earth. And that was twenty years earlier. How many advances in technology had there been since then? There was no guarantee that this was anything other than a doctored file. And yet the part of him that even now wanted to believe that his sister was still alive told him that there was more to it than that.

Then he got a text. YOUR PHONE WILL RING IN THIRTY SECONDS. ANSWER OR SHE DIES.

Now Mulder was convinced this was bullshit – he was getting trolled by the Syndicate were still around. Someone knew they were back in the game, and this was their ham-handed way of trying to get to him. If they'd wanted to guarantee he would play ball, they would have grabbed Scully the second they had the chance. That would've guaranteed his loyalty. This – this was a tired play from a used up playbook. Still, he decided to humor them.

He picked up when it rang. "Excuse me a moment," he told the doctor. "I have to talk my wife."

He picked up. "Boy, did you pick a bad time to call," he said calmly.

"We're not bluffing, Mr. Mulder." The voice was scrambled. Like that would convince him to play ball.

"My sister is dead, whoever you are," he said quietly. "She's been dead for more than thirty years."

"Harold Pillar worked for us."

And suddenly he went cold. He still remembered the psychic who had helped chase down his the last trails of his sister. "What are you talking about?"

"The Syndicate was dead, and you wouldn't stop hounding us. We thought if we gave you want you wanted, you'd finally leave us alone." the voice said with contempt. "Pillar's son was never murdered. We took him a month earlier, and said we'd give him back if he'd give you a fairy tale ending."

Mulder's mind was reeling. "But Jeffrey Spender –"

"Oh, that part was true. Your sister was at April Air Force Base. She did live with Jeffrey Spender. The diary was real, too. As was the story the nurse told you. But we've always been able to find our ways in to locked rooms."

"The ghosts-"

"Before you got to her house, Pillar pricked you with a needle. What you saw in the field was a hallucination designed by our best scientists. When Pillar left you, we reunited him with his son. Why wouldn't he? He went above and beyond the call." The voice paused. "Your own desire for closure did the rest."

Mulder knew he had long since passed the point of being able to assume this was normal. He walked further away. "Who are you?"

"You know better than to expect an answer to that question."

"Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that you're not full of shit. How do I know that's actually my sister?"

"You would have seen her, if you'd made the rendezvous at El Rico. What we didn't know was that she'd made an alliance with the rebels. Before the mass slaughter, she made her escape."

That was a lot of bombshells right there. "She left those people to die?"

"Those people had spent more than a quarter of a century experimenting on her. She owed them no loyalty, and knew she'd get none in return." There was a pause. "That's the other reason we set everything up. We didn't want you to find her before we did."

The old guilt began to seep in, along with a trickle of belief. "Assuming you're telling the truth, why didn't she come and find me?" Mulder demanded.

Another pause. "She wanted to keep you safe. And she wanted to make sure the invasion never happened. She's caused us far more problems in the past fifteen years that even you did."

"I guess it runs in the family," Mulder couldn't help but add. "And if that's the case, why haven't you killed her already?"

"End this conversation without doing exactly we tell you to do, and that's the next thing that'll happen."

Mulder thought for a long moment. He knew what the NSA had been up to the night the Shadow Man had tried to kill him. Alex Danvers had told them earlier that there was an excellent chance they'd expanded on their work since then. Which also meant they probably knew exactly where they were this very minute. "What do you want from me?" he asked quietly.

The room was sparsely furnished, but not Spartan. There were books, several chairs, and a bed. It took Scully a few moments to realize what wasn't there – no electronic devices. No computers, no television, and as far as she could tell, no phones. Still, there was some logic to this – Smith had always seemed able to no what was going on without obvious access to the outside world.

And there he was. His hair was a little grayer, and a face a little more lined, but it was still him. Still, she had to be sure. "Are you Jeremiah Smith?"

"I haven't used that name in a very long time," he told her.

Scully looked at him. "Have we met before?"

"In New Mexico." A pause. "I'm sorry I wasn't able to help your partner."

Scully was flooded with what had been the most horrible time in her life. "And I'm sorry I exposed you."

"We need to be careful. Their eyes are everywhere now." Smith told her. "That's why I don't go out any more."

Scully frowned. "Can't you do what you did before?"

"It's not the same world that it was even fifteen years ago, Scully. The means to find ones like me are more advanced."

"Does the doctor know who you used to be?"

Smith shook his head. "As far as he knows, I'm just another alien recluse who was stranded here for a very long time. He doesn't know what I and my brethren were once supposed to do."

Scully thought hard. The last time she'd been in the same room with this man, she'd been so desperate to find Mulder, she had ended up killing him, and forcing Smith to disappear to God knows where. Now that she had found him again, she no longer had the authority to help him. Then again, she knew someone who did. "You can come in now," she said to Alex.

"I don't have the ability to offer you the same protection I once could," she said slowly. "But I have met someone fairly recently who can offer you that, and hopefully far more. Will you listen to her?"

"She'll have to speak quickly," Smith said casually. "Even as we speak, the forces that once meant to destroy us are reassembling."

By now Alex was in the room. Scully barely noticed. "Colonization. You mean they're trying again?"

"No, Agent Scully," Smith told her. "They never stopped."

Just then, Scully's phone rang. It was Mulder.

"Is Smith there?"

"Yes."

"Then you and Alex need to get him out of there as fast as possible."

She knew that tone. "Are you planning on ditching us?"

"Scully, I just got a call from the Prince of Darkness. Or at least, someone who'd bum a smoke off him."

"They don't normally announce they're coming," Scully reminded him.

"They do when they're offering you another chance to sell your soul." He then forwarded her a picture. It was a face Scully was familiar with – even though it was twenty years older.

"Mulder, you never even knew for sure she was really her."

"What the hell is going on?" Alex demanded.

In answer, Scully showed her the JPEG. "If you were right about Samantha Mulder being alive, that's her."

In response to this, Alex grabbed Mulder's phone. "How far out are they?"

"Any minute now. I'm supposed to walk out the front door, and in three minutes, an unmarked car will pull up, and take me to her."

"Do you really believe that?" Scully demanded.

"Of course not. But whoever made the offer also made it very clear that if I don't do that, two minutes later, there's going to be a 'drive-by' that will conveniently kill everybody still in this building."

Now Alex looked alarmed. She looked up at Smith. "We need to get out of here right _now, _" she told him.

"That's a good idea," Winn's voice said into her ear. "Because there are three humvees headed for your location. ETA less than four minutes."

Alex got on the horn to Maggie. "You getting all this?"

"Do you always have to make my life this much more exciting?" Detective Sawyer asked rhetorically.

"Any exit strategy you have would be more than welcome."

Maggie only needed five seconds. "Get the old man and meet me out back."

Mulder ran over to Kara. "How much of that did you get?" he whispered.

Her strength and speed were normal, but her super-hearing was working just fine. "Enough to know that some very bad people are going to be coming here fast," Kara told him.

Mulder bent down. "I was going to be more subtle about this, but I don't have time to be coy. Are you her?"

There it was. The secret identity that had baffled the world had been ferreted out by Fox Mulder in less than forty-eight hours. "Do you intend to tell the world?" she countered.

"No one ever believed me when I talked about aliens before. Why should they listen now?"

Mulder was going to keep playing his cards close to the vest. Well, they didn't exactly have time to negotiate. "Supergirl won't be able to help anybody for the next twenty-four hours. So if you were going to shout for help, she wouldn't be able to do anything about it."

"A woman after my own heart," Mulder mumbled. "Then you're really not going to like what your sister has planned. Then again, neither will Scully."

"I have a feeling she never has," Kara told him. "All right, I'm listening."

Maggie was waiting by the alley. "How far out are your people?" she demanded.

"They may be fast, but they are only human," Alex said. "This is going to become a shitshow any minute. So I suggest we get the hell out of here."

"And what about Mulder and Kara?" Maggie told her.

Scully sighed. "If there's even a chance that Samantha's still alive, he has to follow through with it. Besides, it's more important that we get Jeremiah Smith to safety right now."

"Don't tell he's playing the Morpheus in the wall trick," Maggie said. "All that means is were going to have to rescue them later, and that'll make whatever's coming look like a walk in the park."

"He's with my _sister," _Alex emphasized. "He'll be fine. Besides, we don't have time to debate this. Jeremiah, come this way."

"You okay?" Mulder asked Kara.

"I should be asking you that. We're about to walk into what is almost certainly a trap, and you don't seem more than a little concerned."

"I'm terrified, Kara," Mulder told her bluntly. "The whole reason I spent my entire career at the FBI ditching my backup was because I didn't want anyone else to get hurt in my pursuit of the truth. Scully was always there to save my ass, and never say an I told you so. Now, I genuinely don't know what's going to be waiting for us when I get into that car, but it's not going to be Publishing Clearing House. And the fact that I'm bringing something that their scientists would salivate at if they had the chance doesn't fucking make me feel better."

"Well, we're about to find out," Kara whispered.

A black limousine that had no business being in this part of town had just pulled up to the front. "I swear, if the window rolls down, and he asks for Grey Poupon…" Mulder muttered to himself.

The door unlocked. "You'll excuse me, but on this occasion, I'm not going to be chivalrous," Mulder says as he opened the door.

And saw literally the last person that he expected to in the back seat.

"I'm very sorry this is how we had to meet again, Mulder," Monica Reyes said.

Mulder was pretty sure his jaw was near his ankles. It took him a very long moment to process, and even then, the mind that had been willing to accept all possibilities just couldn't wrap itself around this one. "Monica? What the hell are you doing here?"

"Exactly what you think I am." Reyes looked at him. "I told you to come alone."

Kara's mind was slowly beginning to process as well. She knew who Reyes was. But the idea that she seemed to be working for the Syndicate now. It was hard for her to fathom. She couldn't imagine what Mulder was going through right now.

Mulder, however, was better at adapting. "I haven't changed after fifteen years. I still don't leave innocent people to die," he practically snarled. "Neither did you. Once."

Monica shook her head. "We don't have time to argue. Get in the car. Both of you."

Kara looked at Mulder. "They don't leave witnesses. This is your best chance of surviving," he said slowly.

He opened the door, and reluctantly got in. After a long moment, Kara did too.

The second after the car started to drive away, the windows in the clinic exploded outward.


	12. Chapter 11

**Chapter 11**

Mulder's verbal explosion wasn't as loud as the one that had happened outside, but it was substantial

"What the hell, Monica?" he demanded. "You put your ass on the life to save my life twice, and this is how you choose to do with it? To work with _them?!"_

Reyes' face remained absolutely stolid – as cold as any of the men and women he'd seen who'd worked for the conspiracy. "Some of us didn't have the luxury of going into hiding," she said slowly. "We have to deal with reality."

"John had the same options you did, and he's clearly taken the right path," Mulder snarled. "But then, he always was a man of principles. Does he know what you're doing?"

That clearly struck home. "Having to leave John behind, that was my biggest regret," Reyes was clearly in pain. "I knew he would never understand. Even more than you won't."

"If you're expecting me to find sympathy for you, you've come to the wrong man," Mulder replied. "Taking hostages. Blowing up buildings. You're not the woman I knew. What did they promise you? What was the retail price on giving up your soul?"

"You wouldn't understand."

"I have a very open mind. Try me."

Mulder honestly thought Monica wasn't going to respond. Why should she? No one who worked for the conspiracy had ever leveled with him about their motivations – they'd either warned him or bought him off with fairly tales.

"Why do you think the manhunt for you was called off?" she said slowly. "You don't really think the people I represent couldn't have found you if they tried hard enough? Hell, you were literally in their backyard. They might not always be competent, but they're not blind."

It had always seemed remarkable that the black helicopters that had been there to blow them away had just left without verifying what they had done. He and Scully had spent years using IDs so paper thin a trained convenience store clerk could have figured out that they weren't who they said they were. The NSA had known everything about them before they tried to use Scully, but they couldn't find them afterwards? Something besides the law of averages had kept them alive all those years. "Are you telling me you stopped them?"

Monica looked at him. "After the X-Files were closed down, they shipped John and me into billing. We were handling travel expenses for three years. Skinner and Kersh ran interference to make sure no one found your trail, but our careers were over. We were fine with that, as long as you were safe." She hesitated. "In October of 2005, I received an anonymous communication to set up a meeting that was supposedly vital to your safety. It said if I told anybody about it, you would be dead."

"And you went through with it."

"You did far dumber things on far weaker intel," Monica reminded him. "And it turned out the face was a familiar one. Marita Covarrubias."

"She didn't want to send me a thank-you note?" Mulder said slowly.

"Actually, she was grateful. Which is why she told me about it instead of just having a drone strike eliminate the motel that you and Scully were staying at the night before." Monica said casually.

That had an effect. "If they knew where we were, why didn't they kill us while we slept? And don't tell me its because they were afraid of how it would look."

"After you escaped, you were regulated to a low security risk." Monica said. "The Bureau and the U.S. military had decided your life's work was meaningless. They didn't think they needed to risk actually killing you."

It was amazing how much hearing that hurt. "But they were still following us."

Monica gave a grim smile. "The Patriot Act came them cover to keep tabs on people who were a threat to domestic security. You should be honored that they still considered you one."

"If he wasn't in danger, why did you listen to her?"

Kara had been quiet this whole time knowing that, at least theoretically, staying quiet was in her best interest. But right now, she needed to know just how much danger she was in.

"What makes you think this is any of your business?" Monica Reyes demanded.

"First of all, you knew where Mulder was. That means you knew he wasn't alone." Deep breath. "Do you know who I am?"

"Kara Danvers, intern at CatCo. Which means you're a reporter." Pause. "And people in our profession don't really like the media."

"If you know that much, you know who my sister is. Which also means you know what agency she works for." Kara fixed her with a glare. "And I'm guessing right now, they may be the only government agency you really don't want to tick off . Which is also the reason you didn't shoot me and leave my body outside for them to find."

There was a long pause, during which Kara wondered if she'd overplayed her hand. Then Reyes paused. "You're very astute, Miss Danvers. And that's a quality my employers consider dangerous these days." She paused. "I don't necessarily share their world views. Though I am curious as to what you're doing with Mulder in the first place."

"She's not important right now. Though I would like to know why you didn't answer her question," Mulder demanded.

Monica returned her focus to her former colleague. "She told me what you found in Mount Weather, but neglected to tell us. That the date for colonization had been set and that the clock was running. She said that they're might be a way to stop it. And that they needed people like me to help."

""So you volunteered to join the Dark Side of the Force."

Now Monica lost her cool. "What would you have me do, Mulder? You and Scully were gone! The X-Files were shut down! And unlike some of us, I wanted to save the world. You didn't bother to stand and fight when you had the chance. Some of us had people we cared about to protect. I gave away everything I loved to try and stop this invasion. I sold my soul, so that you and Scully could have a normal life." She actually seemed like she was about to cry. "I gave up the man I loved."

It did hurt to hear this, and in the back of his mind, Mulder did feel a bit guilty. He might've felt worse about what Monica had done, had this story not sounded just the slightest bit familiar. "He told me that story once, too," he said instead. "I feel more sympathetic to you then to him, but it still doesn't change the fact that he sold out the human race, and you're doing the exact same thing."

"You really think so, Mulder?" Monica demanded. "Because he was right about something, too. That you completely misread the situation. "

"Really? Because the only reason I came on this little voyage was because you – and why you decided to disguise your voice is beyond me right now – said that my sister was alive, and that all I had to do was give up any proof that the conspiracy was still active."

"Well, you did it." Monica demanded.

Mulder gave a grim smile. "You should know me better than that, Monica."

"He was always a better chess player then you."

She didn't have to tell him who she was talking about. "Is he even my real father?"

"You always were smart. At least, you didn't bother to say 'was he'."

"Are we going to see him?" Mulder demanded.

"In a bit." Monica told him. "First we have a stop to make. You may not keep your word, Mulder, but I intend to keep mine."

"Why the hell would you do that?" Kara demanded.

"To prove that not all of us are like him."

"Well, the transmitter's no longer active," Alex told them. "Either they found it, or they've got the kind of material that can scramble our signal. Winn, any luck finding that limousine on satellite?"

"I'm working on it," Winn told them. "How far out are you and your passengers?"

"Less than five minutes." Alex paused. "Does that picture match the one you found in Vancouver?"

"There's a 96 percent correlation," Winn told them. "Pretty much within our margin of error. That's Samantha Mulder."

Scully spoke up. "We're not going to know for certain until you can run a DNA test. All we know right now is that it's someone who might be Mulder's sister."

"You really think they'd go to all this trouble just for a clone?" Alex asked.

"Why don't you ask him?" Scully turned to Jeremiah Smith. "According to Mulder, he saw a field of ten year old Samanthas. So tell me the truth? Is she alive?"

Smith had been quiet through much of the trip. "When the project was being formed, they used genetic tissue from the ones that they taken. Most of it was flawed, and there were only a few that survived the process. Samantha's DNA, for whatever reason, was one of only two subjects that they found suitable for mass production."

Scully turned on him. "Mulder said there was a boy. Who was he?"

"You should know. You met one of them within the year. You knew him as Kurt Crawford."

Scully actually paled a little. Maggie frowned. "I don't remember reading about him in the file."

"When I was diagnosed with my cancer, we went to Allentown to see if we could find information about fellow abductees. Kurt Crawford said he was a member of MUFON." She shook her head. "Mulder found a building with dozens of them. And if you consider him a reliable narrator, they were the ones that were in the tanks."

Alex had told them that Supergirl had seen the tanks in Munich, which confirmed once and for all that the project was back under way. But that didn't answer the real question: was Samantha Mulder still alive?

"What aren't you telling us?" she demanded of Smith.

"Once they had enough genetic material to ensure that the Project could continue, their plan was always to remove any evidence." Smith said calmly. "That's was why he came here. To remove all the evidence."

"But I killed him," Scully told him. "I shot him. I saw him dissolve into chemicals."

Smith looked at her. "There were more than one of me. What makes you so sure there weren't more then one of them?"

And at that exact moment, Alex swerved. Because someone was standing in the road ahead of her.

A giant of a man who like his face had been chiseled out of stone. A man Scully knew for damn sure wasn't a man at all. And as if to confirm it, he was holding a stiletto that she had a damn good idea of what its purpose was.

"Ram him," she told Alex.

"Will it even slow him down?" Alex was perfectly calm. Good.

"I think we'll settle for it just knocking him back a little," Scully told him.

Alex needed no second bidding and floored it.

The Bounty Hunter didn't even flinch, even after the car knocked him for six.

"You have an actual gun with you?" Scully demanded, trying to keep her tone as calm as possible.

Alex nodded. "Back of the neck."

She had read the files. "And stay as far away from the bastard as you possibly can."

Alex had seen what exposure had done to her sister. She didn't want to think what it could do to her. But she knew what her priority had to be. This was an extraterrestrial that wasn't going to be reasoned with.

She got out of the car slowly.

"I have no quarrel with you," the Bounty Hunter told her. He was already on his feet again. "Surrender the traitor, and I will let you live."

"We both know you're lying. Your kind doesn't leave witnesses." Alex told him.

"You are a fool. You are a diplomat playing in a time of war."

"I'm a soldier. And I know that there has to be some common ground." Alex demanded.

"We've made our bargains with others. That is why I am here." He lowered his right hand, and with a hiss the blade of his stiletto became visible.

"Then you make this so much easier."

They both moved. Given his massive build, he was quick. But Alex was younger and she had better aim. In less than two seconds, she drew her weapon and fired twice using armor piercing rounds. In a normal human being, it would've blown their head clean off their neck.

For this creature, he instantly collapsed into a mess of chemicals.

Alex didn't wait more than a second before she ran back to her car. "That was for my sister, you son of a bitch," she whispered.

"That was a hell of a shot," Scully said admiringly.

"Well, let's not wait for reinforcements, alien or otherwise, to make an appearance," Alex told them, as she got back behind the wheel.

"You sure this car will make it back?"

"This thing was made to survive a collision with an asteroid," Alex assured them. "Which doesn't mean there isn't going to be more fallout when we get back to base."

Kara knew that she was in real danger here. She didn't think that a bullet would kill her, but she knew that probably wouldn't stop Reyes from shooting her anyway.

What did worry her was the possibility that Reyes might know her secret identity. Given that the NSA had been following ordinary citizens for decades, there was a very good chance that the conspiracy had been following her for nearly as long. Even if they weren't, if they had a fraction of the reach that Mulder and Scully had claimed they did, they had any number of ways of knowing that Kara Danvers was not who she said she was. Hell, they'd had people at the Social Security Administration. How much work would it take to find out that her number had been doctored with?

If they knew who she was, there was an excellent possibility that they were keeping her alive for their own reasons – none of which could be good ones. The best case scenario, they might have access to kryptonite. Worst case, they might have decided that Supergirl was going to start working for the Syndicate. And they had a lot of tools for persuasion in their book.

She didn't seem to have a lot of good options in front of her right now. So, she was going to stay absolutely still, speak only when spoken to, and hope like hell an opportunity to get her and Mulder out of this jackpot came very quickly.

Just then, the limo came to a stop. Mulder, however, made no effort to get out of the car.

"This isn't an either/or scenario, Mulder," Reyes told him.

"I just want to make sure you're a woman of your word, " Mulder demanded. "Your colleagues notoriously were not. If you harm a hair on Miss Danvers' head, our deal's off."

"You'd do well to remember, Mulder, that you don't have much ground to negotiate on," Reyes said. "That said, I will keep my promise. I said I wouldn't hurt her. I won't."

Reluctantly, Mulder got out of the car. Kara did so a few seconds later with even greater reluctance – and some genuine curiosity.

It was an ordinary-looking building, but even without having to use her x-ray vision, she could see a lot of security. And this building had an entry program that you wouldn't expect to see on a bank vault. Reyes punched in a security code that required nine digits.

"You just happened to have this kind of building here?" Mulder demanded.

"This is National City. We have a reason to keep certain material secure." Reyes said rationally.

Was this a reference to her in some way? An inside joke directed at her? Kara knew National City like the back of her hand, but she didn't think she'd even looked at this particular building twice.

The locks were opened. It still looked like an ordinary warehouse to her. But there were several people there, most of them men in suits. Mulder didn't pay them any mind. The only person he paid attention to was the woman sitting tied up between two of them.

He stopped several feet away from her. "Before we go any further, I want confirmation," he demanded.

Reyes looked a little perplexed. "What do you mean?"

"Don't plead ignorance. You know damn well what it's going to take to convince me."

Reyes shrugged. She made an invisible gesture, and one of the men by the captive's side took out a knife.

"No," Mulder turned to Monica. "You do it."

Even now, Kara wasn't sure what the hell Mulder was talking about. Whatever it was, it didn't unsettle their captor one bit. "You know perfectly well that if I was lying we'd all feel the effects. Including you."

"Let's just say I've gotten more enlightened in the last decade. If we're all going to go down, I want to be sure that you go first."

There was the briefest glimpse of genuine hurt on Reyes' face. It was another sign that Kara could tell that the former ally of Mulder was really hurt by what her friend was telling her. Nevertheless, she didn't hesitate, and walked right up to her prisoner. She took the knife from her ally, and told them to roll up the woman's sleeve.

Very quickly, she drew the blade across the woman's forearm. It was only at that moment that Kara realized just what Mulder thought their prisoner might be – just another clone. He clearly still thought that, because he held his breath.

And then released it when he saw just a stream of normal, red blood. In face, he had quite a lot of trouble breathing normally. 'Samantha? It's really you?"

Samantha Mulder - apparently the genuine article – looked at her big brother with a mix of emotions that even Kara couldn't read entirely. "I'm so sorry that this is how we finally meet again," she said slowly.

Mulder had managed to maintain a stoic façade the entire time that Kara Danvers had known her. From what she knew about the man, he'd kept up that poker face almost his entire life. Now, even given the horror of the circumstances and the reasons that they were here, she saw a tear roll down the corner of his eye. "I thought – I was sure you were dead."

"That's funny, Fox," Samantha said. "They told me the same thing about you."

Kara had been distracted by the enormity of this moment – it had been more than forty years since the two had been in the same room. Which was why she was distracted when she realized the two men who had been guarding Samantha were now standing directly in front of her. "Let's give them a little privacy now, shall we?" Monica demanded in a tone that had no give in it at all.

"You made a promise to Mulder," Kara demanded.

"And I intend to keep it. I have no intention of harming you. But if you don't come with me right now, I will order these men to kill Samantha right in front of him."

"You can't do this!"

"Let me remind you, Miss Danvers. I owe Mulder a great deal. We have a history." Monica paused. "I don't have one with you. Now this can go one of two ways. And considering all the effort it took to arrange this reunion, my personal vote is for no more blood."

"You really are despicable, Miss Reyes," Kara snarled.

"Not really. Just less of an idealist." Reyes said. "I guess you could say it runs in the family."

**DEO HEADQUARTERS**

This wasn't how Alex had hoped to introduce Scully to the world where she did most of her work. But then, when Supergirl was your sister, the best laid plans inevitably ended up FUBAR.

Scully was quiet for two minutes as she took in everything she was seeing - this was, after all, a sight that could leave visitors from another planet speechless for quite some time. Then she said one of the last things that Alex had ever thought she would hear from her.

"Who the hell's in charge here?"

The idea that Scully had basically come into their house, and said "Take me to your leader," actually struck Alex as funny, despite the situation. That was an even bigger mistake, because Scully saw it. "This is hardly the time for levity, Agent Danvers, and I think you of all people would get that."

Now came the other problem. How did they explain to Scully that Mulder had Supergirl watching him this very moment? Kara had already told her that Mulder suspected her secret identity; if he hadn't shared this information with the woman he loved, then this was a hell of a way to find out. Either way, this wasn't going to go over well.

"You have no reason to believe me, Scully, but your partner couldn't be in safer hands." Alex said slowly.

"You're right. I don't believe you." Scully said. "In fact, I'm not sure I believe any aspect of this scenario. I may come across as the more rational one in the partnership, but that doesn't mean I like being bullshitted anymore than Mulder does. So right now, I want to talk to someone in charge!"

"Under normal circumstances, shouting like that could get you locked up."

Alex was relieved that Jonn was wearing his Hank Henshaw face. She had a feeling the normally calm Scully was about one alien away from going Buffy on their asses.

"Director Henshaw, this is Dana Scully," she told him quickly. She didn't like the way that Jeremiah Smith was looking at Jonn. Smith had already demonstrated that he could sense aliens. How long would it take him to realize there was yet another shapeshifter in their midst?

Scully regained a modicum of self-control as Henshaw introduced himself to her, but it soon became very clear that it was just a façade. "All right, Director. You can answer the question foremost in my mind: who the hell gives you the authority to do what you're doing?"

"I realize you're very angry," Jonn said slowly. "So it's probably not going to make you much happier to learn that we've only been in existence since around the time you and your partner left the government. And that we were just as surprised to learn about the conspiracy as you were twenty years ago to discover it."

Scully took a breath. "In my nine years working on the X-Files, I met a lot of liars. And the worst part was, many of those liars weren't necessarily bad people. They honestly thought that by maintaining the lie, they were protecting their country. "She looked them dead in the eye. "Or their planet."

"We know we have to earn your trust. "

"Then earn it. Why is our government spying on its citizens?"

That had to be the last question any of them had expected to hear.

"Um, technically speaking aliens aren't really citizens." Winn said slowly. "I mean, extraterrestrial, right in the name. Not from this planet."

"Some of these aliens look like normal human beings. The only reason your agency can tell what kind they are is unless you have some kind of dossier. And I know damn well you couldn't get that kind of information just by doing the census." Scully was back up to full steam. "My guess is you've already got half the world pissed you at because you're helping aliens. When this gets out, you sure as hell are going to piss off the rest."

_Rational, hell. She was supposed to be the _calm_ one in this partnership. God help us when Mulder gets here._

Jonn had gotten very calm, which usually meant that he was about to give an order. Scully didn't know this, and even if she had, she wouldn't have given a damn. "This may not be the time or place for this, Director Henshaw, but make no mistake: when this is all over, there is going to be a reckoning. And I'm not talking about some half-assed bureaucratic censure. The only reason I'm not making a direct call to Catherine Grant is because I need you to find my partner." Fifteen years out of the Bureau, and she was still calling him that. "Now I don't give a fart in a windstorm what you have to do to find him and Kara. You just do it."

Then, with the righteousness that had carried her through seven years of dealing with the utter inequities of a government that was stacked against her, she grabbed Jeremiah Smith, and started walking out.

Alex finally found her voice. "Where are you taking him?"

"Somewhere safe." Scully didn't even bother to look back.

"Uh, Miss Scully, this is literally the safest place for him," Winn said slowly.

Now did she whirl around. "He was hiding in a slum for more than a year, and he was fine. It took less than fifteen minutes after you got involved for his home to be blown up, and a fellow alien to try and kill him. Forgive me if I don't believe this is a secure location."

Alex had read the files, and could've quoted more than a few people who had died soon after being place under Mulder and Scully's care. What stopped her from mentioning that was 1, the federal government had also been involved in that, and 2) she was basically right. DEO headquarters had been infiltrated on a number of occasions.

Winn tried to be diplomatic. "With respect, Miss Scully, you don't know anyone in National City, and your government connections are fifteen years out of date. Who do you intend to call?"

"The only person who I currently trust." Scully looked at Alex with a stare so ferocious, it would make a Kryptonian wince under it. Alex had a hard time looking her in the face. "Even though I never gave you my number, I have no doubt you'll be able to find me without to try too hard. Let me know when you have a location on Mulder. Otherwise, stay out of my way."

And even though she had no governmental authority, no real influence, and was five foot three and a hundred and ten pounds soaking wet, Alex Danvers knew that the DEO had better be damn careful when she talked to her again.

"You're just going to let her leave?" someone said unbelievingly.

"We're already in the deep end," Alex Danvers reminded him as she and Smith walked towards the front door. "We may have the files, but we're not going to get anywhere in this conspiracy without her and Mulder's help. They weren't inclined to be friendly before. Let's not make enemies of them."

"Not to mention the fact that they've been chasing aliens before some of us were able to walk," Winn pointed out. "They probably have forgotten more about government conspiracies than the rest of can ever hope – or want – to know."

"Besides, she knows we can't exactly lose track of her entirely," Jonn said.

"But—but—she's a civilian."

Alex gave a Scully-like stare of her own. "Dana Scully is anything but."

"It's not that I don't appreciate your loyalty to me," Smith was saying as they walked to the street, "but if you don't think those people can protect me, how do you plan to do it?"

"By taking you to the one person the conspiracy will really think twice before they go directly at." Scully took out her cell phone. "Catherine, its Dana Scully."

"I didn't expect to hear back from you this soon," Cat Grant said. "I'm guessing things with our mutual friends haven't been going that well."

"Understatement of the year." Scully said. "Look, I need you to send a car to the location I'm going to text you. And I realize this is probably beneath his pay-grade, but I'd be happier if James Olsen were driving it."

"That's not going to be a problem, but may I ask why you're being so particular?"

"You trust me?"

"I'm a journalist. It's not in my nature." Cat paused. "But you've never led me wrong. Besides, I owe you."

"You said you wanted to give Mulder and me a platform," Scully paused. "We're about to jump up and down on it."


	13. Chapter 12

**Chapter 12**

Kara had been feeling a little more like 'herself' over the last hour or so, but she had no desire to demonstrate this in front of people she had no reason to trust. Then again, these people had spent years dealing in other people's secrets. There was an excellent chance that they might know hers.

"What the hell do you want with me?" she demanded once they were outside the building.

"You're not in front of Mulder, Miss Danvers," Monica said. "You can save the pretense of struggling."

And just like that, Kara's blood began to run cold. "What do you mean?" she said as neutrally as she could manage.

"You told me to spare you the pretense that I didn't know who you were," Monica said slowly. "Be honest enough to do the same now that we're alone."

_They knew. _"Get your flunkies out of here." When Monica hesitated, she added: "Whatever dirty laundry you're about to air shouldn't be heard by unconcerned parties."

The two men looked at her until Monica gave an almost imperceptible nod. Then they walked back inside the building. "All right, what do you think you know?"

"Mulder was right. The date was set. And then, roughly a year before the invasion was scheduled to take place, Superman showed up. And shot decades of planning to sunshine." Monica looked at her. "He saved the world without even knowing it."

"Your people had to rethink everything," Kara said.

"All the impossible scenarios they'd planned for, they'd never even considered that aliens might be considered friendly." Monica told her. "So they went back underground, trying to figure out the next move."

A question came up. "Is Lex Luthor part of the Syndicate?"

"Are you kidding? He was considered an even bigger threat than Superman. The Syndicate biggest hope was that the two of them would neutralize each other somehow. But that got shot to hell when Luthor went to prison. They took other measures, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Two days ago, it finally did."

Even if she had access to all her powers, Kara wasn't sure she'd be able to move.

"I don't know how Mulder found out about you, and in the end, it doesn't matter." Monica looked Kara dead in the eye. "Because right now, there's something you need to do."

"And what's that?"

"Beat me to a pulp."

Of all the things that she expected Monica Reyes to say, that was probably the last one. "What the hell?"

"We don't have much time, so I'm going to make this as plain as I possibly can. There is a very short list that the Syndicate has of possible secret identities for Supergirl. I don't think it'll come as a huge shock for you to know that you're on it." Monica Reyes didn't even pause to let that bombshell sit. "And they didn't consider it a coincidence that Mulder and Scully made contact with your sister earlier today."

"Well, if they know why the hell haven't you killed me?"

"Because right now, they don't know you're here."

At that moment, something clicked. Monica Reyes had been referring to the Syndicate as 'they', not we. Had Mulder misread her all along?

"My employer is a very careful man. He prepares for everything. So just before all of the existing kryptonite on Earth was supposedly destroyed, he came into possession of a sizable quantity. " She hesitated. "Including the red variety."

And now, it made sense. Horrible sense.

"I've made some truly horrible compromises in the last few years, Miss Danvers, but there is one thing I know with certainty. Under absolutely no circumstances can the people I work for have Supergirl under their control. That would be disastrous for everybody on this planet." Monica said slowly.

A statement they could both agree on. "After my little skirmish with your own extraterrestrial, I'm nowhere near full strength," Kara said slowly.

"No, but I'm betting you can still run pretty fast." Monica said slowly. "Which is what you're going to do in about two minutes."

"I'm not leaving Mulder behind," Kara said calmly.

"Mulder has been handling far larger threats before you were born," she reminded him. "This is going to be a cakewalk compared to flukemen in the sewers."

"And what about your stoolies?"

"Your heroic streak is starting to make me queasy." Monica held up a hand. "If you try to save everybody, you're not going to save anybody. I thought you of all people would know that by now."

Kara knew that she was right. Nevertheless, she couldn't stop herself. "They'll kill you for this."

"Mulder isn't the only one on the X-Files whose been left for dead, and survived. I can take care of myself." She breathed deeply. "Just try not to do the job for them."

Kara took a deep breath. "This is going to hurt. A lot."

CATCO HEADQUARTERS

Despite all the things he had to do working his way up at the Daily Planet, James wasn't sure driving the CatCo limousine was much of a promotion. Then he heard who it was, and what her cargo might be.

"You sure we shouldn't call Supergirl for this?" James asked.

"Based on what little Scully told me, right now she doesn't want anything to do with the DEO." Cat told him

"Even if this involves a fellow traveler?"

"She's really inherited Mulder's paranoid streak," Cat admitted. "Which, given what they went through the past quarter of a century, I don't really blame them for."

"I gotta tell you, I'd still feel a lot better if I had an armored car."

"James, if I had the budget I'd send you out there in a tank."

Just then, James saw his passengers. Or he thought he did. Scully was standing there – with Cat Grant. "You're still at Catco, right?"

"You just left me there." Pause. "I'm guessing they found what they're looking for."

"You could say that. I'll call you when we're there." He hung up, and lowered the driver's window. "I guess this is how you prepare for anything."

"I'm guessing this isn't a novel sight to you," Scully told him.

"When you work in Metropolis, you got used to the weird pretty quick."

"The people who are chasing me aren't going to be slowed down by my trickery," 'Cat Grant' told him. "And this may not hold them off for very long."

"Then I think you'd better get in the back," James told 'her'.

For almost all of his adult life, Mulder had been looking for his sister. He'd been led down so many false leads – living with aliens, dead at the hand of a serial killer, living in the suburbs – that giving up, however misguided the intelligence had been, was almost a relief. And now that he was face to face with the object of a quest he had given up fifteen years earlier, he found himself utterly at a loss. All the years he had spent searching, all the questions he had wanted to ask, he finally found himself reduced to one simple phrase.

"How did you get away?"

Samantha gave a sickly smile. "As you see, I never quite did."

"I know what they did to you," he said slowly. "They spent three months doing it to me."

"I know." She hesitated. "I went to your gravestone. I waited until the service was over, and then I just said goodbye. I should've known better."

"That makes two of us." Mulder gave a pallid grin of his own. "Answer my question."

"They held me for years. After I – tried to escape, they raised the level of security on me. The only one who I saw regularly was – Jeffrey's father."

"How did you know?"

"Cassandra told me. We were held together a lot of the time." She shook a head. "There were lots of us. The Syndicate's family. I imagine he told you why they were traded."

"To get the alien genome. So that they could make a hybrid. For the invasion."

"They – made sure – that their families could visit." Samantha shook her head. "They might have even thought that it was a courtesy. But we knew why we'd been taken. After a while, most of us didn't even come out for them any more."

Mulder didn't know if he could take the answer to the next question. "Did our father come?"

Samantha shook her head. "Not once. I'm guessing he couldn't live with the guilt. When I learned, I actually respected him for not coming. At least he had the honesty not to pretend. Not like that smoking bastard."

Mulder didn't know if he had the stomach to ask the next question. "Is _he_ my father?"

Samantha gave a sympathetic look. "He wasn't even a father to his actual child. He wasn't a husband to his wife. Blood doesn't matter. Actions do. But he thought he was. Maybe that's the real reason he let you live all that time." She grimaced. "Or why he let me get away."

"How did you escape?"

"When the rebels came, I saw an opportunity. Their initial hope was by attacking the Syndicate's strongholds, they would be able to expose everything that they had done. The night of El Rico, I planned to escape with them." Samantha hesitated. "Then I learned the scope of their plans."

Mulder could make an educated guess. "The attacks in Tunguska and at Skyland Mountain. The ones in Philadelphia that nearly killed Scully."

"I could justify what they had done to the Syndicate, even if it meant the deaths of their families. But when I learned that they had slaughtered thousands of innocent people, just as a warning shot to the Syndicate, that their policy to stop the invasion was going to be literal scorched earth," Samantha shook her head. "I'd been part of one conspiracy, I wasn't going to be part of another. During the chaos I managed to get away."

"And you've been running ever since."

Samantha gave a shaky smile. "I assumed that when most of the Syndicate was slaughtered, looking for a lone escapee wasn't going to be a priority. I managed to make it to Canada."

"I saw the fields. I know what they were doing there." Mulder said. "Some of it, anyway."

Samantha shook her head again. "There were still clones of me there, so trying to find one particular Samantha Mulder was always going to be difficult. I was off the grid for a very long time. And when Superman and the rest of the aliens began to appear, I actually dared to think we might've turned a corner. That the Syndicate wouldn't dare strike now that aliens were out in the open."

"And they've basically been lying in wait ever since," Mulder remarked. "How did they catch you this time?"

"Over the last few years, they've been doing a lot of the groundwork all across Europe and Asia," Samantha told him. "Some of the same tests that they were trying years ago. I've no doubt you've seen some of them."

"Bee attacks." Mulder nodded. "Infecting men and women with the alien virus. I hadn't heard of any for years."

"It's easier to control the media then it was before," Samantha reminded him. "My God, the whole reason the DOD came up with the Internet was because they saw the possibilities. If everything's a crisis, nothing is."

This was a level of paranoia that Fox wasn't even sure the Lone Gunman would've ever trafficked in. "You really are my sister."

She actually smiled at this. "I guess that's another thing that runs in the family."

Then they heard two gunshots. Mulder looked around and realized that Kara and Reyes were nowhere to be seen. They had barely enough time to take this before there was an explosion. "What the hell?" Mulder shouted.

Fox and Samantha ran to the front door to see chaos in their wake. The car that Monica had brought them in was a burning pile of wreckage. Monica Reyes was bloody and bruised. And Kara Danvers was nowhere to be seen.

Considering everything that had just happened, Mulder was stunned when his sister ran over to the woman who'd arranged to have her captured. "What happened here?"

"Supergirl happened," Monica told them.

Mulder didn't believe this for many reasons, not the least of which was this level of carnage was definitely not Supergirl's style, even if her life was in peril (And this was Supergirl, so how many non-human threats to her could there actually _be?) _And he was still royally pissed at Monica's betrayal to consider that she might be telling the truth.  
"Supergirl doesn't do a rescue mission, and then not complete the rescue," he said sarcastically.

"God Mulder, you overanalyze _everything!" _ Even through what was probably a lot of pain, he could tell Monica was snarling at him. "You'd been handed an escape on a fucking silver platter: will you take the opportunity or not?"

And then it hit him. God, he was so naïve sometimes. "Come with us," he said.

"It's too late to save me, Mulder. Probably years too late." Through her bloodied face, Monica was trying to smile. "Besides, you know how we work. We don't jump without a parachute."

Mulder didn't know what she meant, but he knew he was faced with a choice: his sister or his friend. And he didn't intend to make the wrong choice twice. "I'm glad I knew you," she said.

Monica hacked a cough. "Don't thank me. Just go."

The Mulder family did the only thing they could do. Run.

Mulder's feelings about Monica might not have lasted if he'd stayed. Because the second they were out of sight, she took out her cell phone and hit a special number. "Lillian, it's me. I need you to get me a distraction."

Kara wasn't quite feeling like herself, but she had regained enough of her agility that she could probably have beaten the Flash in a footrace. And nothing had affected her memory. By the time she had gotten three blocks, she knew exactly where they had been and what had happened.

Before she had beaten Reyes to a pulp, the rogue agent had given her back her cell. Once she thought she had gained enough distance, she had taken it out, and contacted the DEO.

"Monica Reyes? Didn't she use to work for the X-Files?" Alex demanded.

"She's been playing both sides against the middle." Kara looked back. "Which means, if history is any indication, she doesn't have long to live." She gathered herself. "Do you have a fix on my location?"

"Yes, but we've got another problem," Jonn then told her about Scully's outrage and how she had stormed out taking Jeremiah Smith with her. "She's not the kind of person who would do anything irrational, is she?"

"When she was with the Bureau, absolutely not," Kara told her. "But the Dana Scully I've gotten to know over the past few days, she will do absolutely anything to help the people she loves. Heaven help whoever gets in her way."

"Which may very well include us," Jonn admitted. "There's an excellent chance she'll throw everything we've worked under the bus."

"And that means we know exactly where she'll go." Kara looked towards the Catco building, which even from this distance loomed over the city. "Maybe we can hold her off. Mulder and his sister-"

In the distance, she heard an explosion. It was loud enough so that everyone could hear it, but Kara knew exactly where it came from. However, it wasn't loud enough to be an entire building. "I don't think I'm the only one Monica Reyes tried to save tonight," she said slowly.

"Let me guess. Reyes was holding you and Mulder near the piers." Alex said. "Car just blew up there."

"Get a team there fast," Kara said. "I'll meet you there."

She ducked into an alley. Somehow, knowing what she might find, she thought that she might find the ability to take to the skies after all.

She just hoped that it wasn't already too late.

About halfway through their drive through National City, James was beginning to realize just why Scully and Mulder had been so paranoid all those years.

There was a routine checkpoint that he had driven through dozens of times without being stopped. Only this time, he was. And they really made him wait.

"Officer, you'd better have a good explanation for this," 'Cat Grant' said very snappishly. "We weren't speeding, I spend thousands on maintenance, so I know we don't have a broken taillight, and I know James's paperwork is in order. So, you'd better have a damn good reason for holding us up."

The officer had the good grace to look ashamed, but stuck to his guns. "Miss Grant, there is an APB going out –"

"I'm going to stop you right there," Cat told him. "Given James' celebrity, my guess is you figured out who he was within a minute. So unless you're really prepared to accuse my number one employee of 'driving while black' – with his boss in the back seat – I'd make sure you don't have a single mark on your record, because I am about five seconds away from making you the most infamous cop since Stacy Koons."

James almost felt sorry for the man, who had to just be a poor street level cop stuck between two people much higher up the food chain then him. And apparently, when stuck between your superior officer and a woman who commanded her own hashtag, it was pretty who you listened to, especially in National City.

"Sorry for the inconvenience," he said in almost a whisper before letting them drive away.

The minute the cop was out of sight, James asked: "Do you think that was DEO or the Syndicate?"

"The DEO would have sent someone we know," Scully reminded him. "My guess is his job was to hold us long enough for them to send the unmarked cars our way. I'm a little surprised they gave up that easily."

"You know that these people do not fail," 'Cat Grant' reminded her. "If they hesitated here, they're probably planning something a lot more certain very shortly."

"Even considering who my friends are?" Scully asked.

"The one thing these people fear is exposure," 'Smith reminded them. "In an earlier era, they'd just have killed journalists. My guess is they're going to find a way to somehow negate everything Catco stands for. How they would do that is still beyond me, but I seriously doubt its beyond them."

"Then we better do this fast," Scully replied. "Do you have a way to get in touch with our other ace in the hole?"

"You just came from the DEO," James said quietly. "If Supergirl wasn't actually there, I imagine Alex has contacted her already. Probably she's trying to track down Mulder and Kara right now."

"Even though I put them over a barrel?"

"Given the circumstances, I'm willing to bet they understood," James pointed out. "Because once the Syndicate has the DEO, CatCo _and _Supergirl aligned against them, their days are more than numbered."

Scully knew that that was a lot of power. But she'd been dealing with the Syndicate for so long, she'd begun to think they were as invulnerable as the Kryptonians.

She hoped like hell she was wrong.

Fox and Samantha had no choice but to run. There was something fitting in it, as one way or another, the two of them had been running from the world for the last fifteen years. Maybe even longer.

But it was different now. Monica had taken his phone and Samantha had been grabbed by the Syndicate's goons yesterday. Neither of them knew National City that well, but they knew with certainty the Syndicate would be using every satellite, traffic cam, and electronic device at their disposal to track down two of the people who had been on the conspiracy's blacklist for more than a quarter of a century.

Fox knew that his best move was to go to the only place that was safe for them right now. Only he had no idea how to get to Catco from here. Not for the first time, he cursed the decay of infrastructure that had gotten rid of anything resembling a phone booth anywhere. He needed to get in touch with Scully, but that was looking like a non-starter. And given the ability to track a person by using a cell phone, the last thing he wanted to do was endanger a stranger's life. He'd done that enough already in the last few hours.

After nearly twenty minutes of running, he finally turned to Samantha. "If you were hoping that your big brother was going to save you this time, I'm sorry to disappoint you."

"We're in one of the biggest cities in the country," Samantha said. "Where the hell is everybody?"

It was a bit of an exaggeration. They'd passed four separate people while running through the streets, but Fox knew what his sister was talking about. DC would have three times as many people on the streets these days.

"The way I see it, we have two options. I can yell for help, and hope that Supergirl hears me."

"Whatever she's doing tonight, it's probably a lot more important than the two of us. " Clearly his sister had no clear idea who she was. Then again, Mulder was a little astonished she hadn't come to save them. "What's the other option?"

"We go to the only other place I know in this town," Fox said. "Casablanca.' He looked at the street signs. "Once we get there, we call the only cop I can trust."

By Fox's calculations, they were six blocks away from it. He just hoped the luck that had somehow kept him and Scully alive all these years could just hold out a few more minutes.

It lasted another five. Then, less than two blocks away from the only salvation he was aware of, three more black limousines suddenly pulled up surrounding them. The doors opened, and three men in suits stepped out holding guns. Thankfully, none of them had the face that he and Samantha knew were invulnerable.

That was the extent of the good news. Because seconds after that, another figure stepped out of the car. He no longer had the white flowing hair that he and Scully had seen the last time, but otherwise he was unchanged. His hair was gray, his face was lined, and he still had that hole in his neck. Evil oozed out of him, even as he took out his ever present back of Morleys, and took out a cigarette.

"Well, well," he said in a voice that was far stronger than the one he'd heard fourteen years ago. "Isn't this pleasant? A family reunion. You know, even after all the things I've witnessed, I never believed I'd see the two of you together again."

Fox's face took its usual measure of disgust. 'You should know. You're the one who did everything in his power to make sure it never happened."

The old man lit his cigarette, and took a draw from his neck. "All these years we've known each other, Mulder, and you still don't know the first thing about me."

"He does." Samantha spoke up. "I just spent the last few hours enlightening him. And believe me, old man, you had better stay as far away from us as you can possibly can."

Was their something resembling hurt in his eyes? No. The Cigarette-Smoking Man was incapable of any emotion. "I'm sure you have your version of events, Samantha."

"Don't say another word, you son of a bitch," Samantha snarled. "I have the scars of what you and your devils spent decades doing to me. There's no power in this galaxy that could make me feel sorry for you."

"Maybe not." The old man was still unruffled. "But there are powers in this galaxy that were thwarted because of what we did. I don't expect you to understand, but what we did saved lives. It would've saved yours and your brother's too, if you'd just had the patience to listen."

"Is that your superpower?" Mulder asked. "The ability to bore people to death with your self-righteous blather? Because given the choice, I'd rather take a bullet to the brain rather then listen to any more of your crap."

"I'm glad to hear that,"" The old man walked right up to them. "Because I'm sorry to tell you that the last of your none lives has run its course." He looked right at them. "For both of you."

He'd been expected this for quite some time, but now that it was actually coming, he was actually starting to reel a little. "Fine," he said slowly. "Just leave Scully out of this."

"Nearly twenty years, you're still willing to die for her." The Smoking Man said. "I would make that promise, but we both know it would be just another lie."

"So this is it?" Samantha said. "We just disappear one last time. You already had our father killed. Now you're just going to slaughter the last of us?"

"This job requires sacrifice. You never understood that."

"I understood I'm talking to a man who surrendered his own wife and son as if they were test subjects." Samantha said. "I knew years ago you had no soul. And if that's what it took to survive, the colonists won before they even landed."

This really did seem to hurt. But as was always the case with the old man, he just shook it off. He was about to give some final order, when one of the men tapped him on the shoulder.

"Sir, we have a problem." He handed him a phone.

For the first time in a long time, Mulder saw the old man's reserve falter. "Find the service that's broadcasting this and block it."

"That's just it. It's not coming from a channel. Its all over the internet.

"This is Cat Grant with a special report. A year ago, I utilized my network to bring forth a revolutionary idea: the appearance of a heroine known as Supergirl."

"A lot has happened between then and now. The idea of alien visitors to our planet, not all of them friendly, has become so much a part of the daily discourse that when tales of a new crisis emerges, we flip right over to the TV page. "

"I am least partially blame for this deluge. And I realize now that part of this – a very large part in fact – was due to my own guilt for letting a far larger story fall the wayside nearly thirty years ago. One that was at least as big as Supergirl, and in a far larger sense, much more important."

"To everyone in National City, to all of CatCo's affiliates, to everyone somehow streaming this message, your government has been lying to you. Not the lies of failed campaign promises or bureaucratic snafus, but the biggest possible lie of all: aliens have been coming to Earth for decades before we even heard of Superman. Aliens that have colonized worlds across the universe. And aliens that wish to turn Earth into a slave race."

Cat Grant paused. "That in itself, is nothing new considering what we all experience earlier this year. What is new is that forces within our own government have been working with these aliens in secret to serve their own ends. Not to save the human race, which would be understandable if no less despicable. No, to save themselves."

"To cover up their misdeeds, these forces have engaged in a system to abduct and experiment on its own citizens, doing things that even Mengele would shudder at to see carried out. I can not even begin to consider what the casualty rate must be, but it verges on that of pure genocide."

"Now I realize that this is the talk of the same late night talk show hosts and internet fringe groups I have spent my entire career fighting against. I would be just another biovating, bloated old man in a tin hat if I said all this without proof." Using all the skills in a lifetime spent in journalism, Cat Grant took a very long pause. "Ladies and gentleman, and those extraterrestrials who I know bear this planet no harm, in my offices tonight, I have that proof."

Even heard over the scratchy sound of a phone, every word rang crystal clear to Mulder. And he had the pure delight of watching the Smoking Man turn a shade of pale that not even lung cancer could bring about.

"I have an FBI agent, who worked in what the Bureau pathetically called a department organized to investigate the paranormal and the supernatural, who has first hand evidence of this decades long conspiracy, who experienced first hand the ruthlessness these men have gone to subvert the truth and defeat those who would expose it. This agent is a reliable source who knows what our government has done, and more insidiously, what they have not. At midnight, the greatest secret that our government has tried to keep buried will go public at last. We will open what the FBI laughingly called the X-Files."

And as the graphic appeared over the Catco logo, Mulder couldn't resist looking at his lifetime nemesis.

"It looks like the truth is finally going to be out there for all to see, doesn't it?"


	14. Chapter 13

**Chapter 13**

It had taken Supergirl less than three minutes to get to the section of National City she had been held hostage at not an hour earlier. It was radically changed, though. There was a fiery limousine that contained two bodies, and the warehouse was deserted. If she had to guess, Monica Reyes' had proven her loyalty. She had killed the two men guarded them, had blown up the limousine to disguise her crime, and let the Mulders escape. For her sins, she was probably either dead or had been disappeared.

"Have you got a fix on the location of either of the Mulders?" Supergirl asked Winn.

"That's going to be tricky. One minute after the limousine exploded, all satellite feeds over the area went dead." Winn told her.

"You think this is the Syndicate's handiwork?" Kara asked.

"Could be. There's already a lot of chaos around National City." Jonn paused. "And we're about to get a lot more." He relayed the message Cat had made to the world but was directed at the conspiracy.

"Catherine Grant, you magnificent bastard," Kara whispered to herself.

"This is a hell of a card to play," Jonn told her. "Do you think it'll work?"

"The only think these people fear more than an alien invasion is having their dirty laundry aired for the world to see," Supergirl reminded them. "I think we have an obligation to let her play this out."

"There's a very good chance they'll kill Mulder and Scully if they do," Winn reminded them.

"That's what I'm here for." Supergirl made clear.

At that moment, a black and white unit appeared on the scene. Out of it came a clearly outraged Maggie Sawyer. "Your colleagues in the shadows are making a hell of a mess tonight," she told Supergirl bluntly.

"I really hope you're not referring to my friends," Supergirl said carefully.

"I said 'colleagues', not 'friends'. I'm pretty sure these sons of bitches don't have any." Maggie looked around. "I've just spent the last two hours convincing them not to press charges against Clarence Nash."

It shouldn't have come as a shock to Kara this had happened, but somehow it did. "Dare I ask why?"

"Apparently Clarence, whose spent the last four years cutting every corner he could to keep that place open, decided tonight to burn the place down for the insurance money." Maggie sniffed. "The fact that the place was clearly blown to smithereens has not convinced the arson investigators one iota from this conclusion."

This was just another example of the collateral damage the conspiracy laid in its wake. "I have a feeling that these orders came from on high."

"Tell me about it. The rank and file all know better, which is why I was so shocked to see the Deputy Commissioner come down to a community I didn't think he could find with both hands and Google Maps." Maggie told her. "And that's just the start. For some reason, ninety minutes ago, an order came down for checkpoints across the city. We didn't have checkpoint when Live Wire was laying waste to this area. Whoever Mulder and Scully pissed off, they are protected from up on high by the Prince of Darkness."

"I'm pretty sure they'd say you were literally correct. From what I understand, he chain smokes like a chimney." Supergirl told her.

"I think I've pissed off more superiors in two hours than I have in three years on the force," Maggie said. "You wouldn't happen to know any government agencies dealing with extraterrestrials that might be hiring, do you?"

"The night is young," Supergirl said. "And it'll depend if I can find Mulder before they do."

"Funny you should mention that," Maggie told her. "Guess who a couple of my sources at our favorite hangout spotting just a few blocks away?"

In all the years that Mulder had known the Smoking Man, there had only been one occasion where he'd known the old man to have ever been put off-kilter. Even then, it had been secondhand information.

After the murder of his father and Melissa Scully was in the hospital, Skinner had tried to negotiate their return to safety with the digital tape that had the MJ Files on it. The Smoking Man had tried to get a hold of it, but in a clear case of choosing the wrong help, the assassination attempt on Krycek had failed. The Smoking Man had come to Skinner's office with the intention of laughing in his face – and then Skinner had put him check by telling him that Albert Hosteen had memorized the contents of the tape and passed it along in the ancient Navajo tradition. Skinner had prefaced this with a line he wished he'd been able to deliver: "This is where you pucker up and kiss my ass."

The Smoking Man had never looked as disconcerted in Mulder's presence, and he'd stuck a gun in the man's face three separate times. He was doing his best to hide it, but when he took out another Morley, Mulder was pretty sure he saw his hands shake.

"I suppose this was your fallback position in case this happened," the Smoking Man said.

"You should know me better than that by now," Mulder said. "I fly by the seat of my pants. But I've learned enough that when dealing with you, you've got to be prepared."

The Smoking Man had never liked his glibness and he didn't seem particularly happy with it now. "Get your partner on the phone," he demanded.

"She's never listened to me before. What makes you think she'll start now?"

But that was a one-liner too many, because the Smoking Man had recovered enough of his panache. He nodded towards one of his flunkies, and they put a gun to Samantha's head.

"I've tolerated a lot from you over years, Mulder," he said calmly. "But as I've gotten older, I've gotten a lot less patient." He took out his cell phone. "Get Scully on the phone, or I will remind you just what kind of man you've been dealing with."

CATCO HEADQUARTERS

10:59 PM

Scully had known that this card – bringing the X-Files and the conspiracy to the attention of the world was a dangerous card to play. Every other time they had attempted to go public had always resulted in multiple deaths. But that had been a long time ago, when they'd still had trust in the government they worked for, when they'd still had family alive – when they'd been alone against an unfriendly world

Now, Scully had an agency that believed in what they were doing, the most powerful woman in media, and Supergirl behind her. She really hoped for all their sakes that it was enough.

"James' is downloading the files," Cat Grant told her. "Give the word, and they can be on line, to use a particularly dull cliché, faster than a speeding bullet."

Scully took a long pause. "However this turns out, and you know as well as I do the odds of there being a happy ending, I don't know how to thank you."

"If we can get Mulder back her in one piece, it's all the thanks I'll need." Cat paused. "Though I'm not going to lie to you, an exclusive interview when this is all over would be nice."

"If this works, I think Mulder would be willing to give you a prime time exclusive," Scully joked.

At that moment, her cell rang. The Caller ID just said: UNKNOWN. "Here we go," she said slowly. "Yes?"

"Loved the latest promo. Sounds like it could be nearly as thrilling as when Geraldo opened Capone's vault."

Scully heaved a sigh she didn't know she'd been holding in until now. "Mulder, you're all right?"

"Relatively speaking. But right now, I'm in the company of people who _really _don't want to see The Daily Show interrupted."

There was a very long pause. And then a voice that Scully could've easily gone the rest of her life without ever hearing again spoke up. "You know, when you first went to work with Mulder, we really thought you'd be the voice of the restraint. And now here you are, about to air all our dirty laundry over the news. You're becoming a player after all this time."

"I've seen what it takes to become a 'player'," Scully told him. "You basically have to be born without a soul. I've seen mutants with more humanity than you."

"I'd expect a little gratitude after all this time," the Smoking Man said in his unctuous tone. "If it wasn't for me, you'd never have met Mulder at all.'

"And if it wasn't for you, I'd still have my ovaries. There's no power on this planet – or off it – that could make me grateful that we've ever met."

There was a pause. When it ended, any trace of goodwill was from Cancer Man's voice. "Then I'd have some respect for the man who currently has a gun to Mulder's head."

"You've had one at both our heads for decades," Scully reminded him. "If you're only _now _threatening to pull the trigger, you're more desperate than I thought."

Cat Grant had heard this side of the conversation. "Put it on speaker and let me talk to him," she said.

Scully looked at her. "Not that I doubt your ability, but are you sure you're up for this?"

"I've had a fatwa put out on me by the Ayatollah and the Kardashians. This man's an amateur by comparison. Besides, I think the best chance we have is to put him on the defensive."

"Considering the situation, I'd say I warrant some respect."

"Don't try and threaten me. I've watched dictators die."

If the Cigarette Smoking Man was at all unsettled to hear the woman who'd threatened the conspiracy with exposure not ten minutes earlier, he did his usual good job of hiding his surprise. "Miss Grant. Have you decided to act as Scully's mouthpiece?"

"That depends. Who do I have the honor of addressing?" When the Smoking Man didn't answer, she said: "Doesn't matter. This is a no-smoking building anyway."

"I don't negotiate, Miss Grant. Never have, never will."

"That's fine. You can listen for a change, Mr. Spender, I believe it was. All my life, I've been dealing with people like you. People who separate rich from poor, black from white, men from women, but you're all the same at your core. You have power, and you want to make sure no one else has any. You may have convinced yourself that you're dealing with higher stakes than some of the ones that I've dealt with, but you're all the same. And trust me when I say, your time is up."

Mulder wasn't sure what unsettled the old man more: the fact that he was being talked down to, or that one of his aliases was being so casually mentioned. "You really think you can bring me to justice?"

"I gave up on the idea of justice when the world economy crashed and nobody went to jail. But I still believe in the truth." Cat said slowly. "And you're right. If I expose you and everything you and your cronies have done over the past seventy years, many – perhaps even most - will dismiss it. But some will believe. And a lot of the ones who'll believe work for the same agencies that you've spent your lifetime trying to destroy. And I think you'll be amazed how fast they'll turn on you."

"I'd be very careful with what I said next, Miss Grant." The Smoking Man was still trying to speak from a position of power.

"So here's what's going to happen. In exactly one hour, you will bring Mulder and his sister to the Catco building unharmed. Should anything happen to them – or to me – everything in the X-Files that pertains to the conspiracy will go up on the Internet. And you know what happens to people who become loose ends in your organization. Hell, you've executed a few of them yourself."

"What promise do I have that this won't happen if I do release them?"

"What do you care? You just told me you don't negotiate. You have fifty-eight minutes before I make you and your friends world famous."

And then Cat Grant did something that Mulder was willing to bet hadn't happened to the Smoking Man in a very long time. She hung up on him.

Mulder couldn't help himself. "I guess this is where I say: "Welcome to the world of high technology.'

It was exactly the wrong thing to say. "You really think I'm just going to give in to blackmail?" The Smoking Man turned to his flunkies, who had been looking increasingly nervous over the last few minutes. "Get in contact with our friend at Star Labs. We're going to need their pulse bomb."

He turned back to Mulder. "How fitting. I've been around since you started causing me problems. Now, I'm here when it finally ends."

CATCO BUILDING

Supergirl had finally regained the strength to take to the air. She knew where things were going to come to a climax, and she managed to arrive in time to hear the tail end of Cat Grant's threat to the Smoking Man.

"Nice of you to show up without us having to call for you for once," Cat said after hanging up.

"Sorry, I've spent the last hour cleaning up a couple of messes," Supergirl told them. "I have a feeling that you know who's responsible."

"Indeed," Cat looked up. "I don't suppose there's any way you could resolve this for us. Have you had any luck finding the Mulder family?"

Supergirl shook her head. "I just finished a sweep of the city. These men have been prepared for every eventuality for a generation. No doubt they have the common sense to line their vehicles with lead and soundproof the interiors."

"I thought as much," Cat turned to Scully. "You're not quite my elder, but in this particular scenario, you are definitely my superior. Is there any chance at all they will live up to their side of the bargain?"

Scully didn't even have to think for a second. "Of course not. The only reason these men struck their devil's bargain with the aliens was because they planned to double cross _them. _If there's one thing I know for an absolute certainty, it's that these people do not keep their word. That bastard has no intention of starting now."

"Well, then I see no reason that we should do the same," Cat paused. "Of course, you are aware that if we do so, they will kill Mulder."

"They tried to kill us for more than a decade. Hell, you've read the files. They actually succeeded a couple of times. Mulder has made it abundantly clear that he is willing to die for the truth to come out. The reason he hasn't…"

Scully trailed off. She didn't have to answer the question. Cat Grant had been absolutely right on this: she and Mulder were soul mates.

Cat walked up to Scully. "I'm sorry I got you into this."

Once again, Kara was silently in awe. This was the second time in a week Cat had openly apologized for her actions.

"Don't you dare blame yourself for this," Scully insisted. "These pricks have been chasing us for so long, I honestly can't remember a time when we weren't in danger. These monsters have made generations of people suffer. Our problems are microscopic compared to what they've done to the world."

"Then I think it's time we make them pay," Supergirl said with her usual air of self-confidence. "I've never been one to kick the asses of the elderly before, but I think I'll make an exception in this case."

Scully gave a grim smile. "I'd love to see it happen, but I'm not confident it would kill him."

"I don't kill people. I make them face justice. And that's what we're going to do, right?"

"Much as I admire your passion for this, I must agree with Dana that she has a point." Cat paused. "These people seem to have been operating two steps ahead of us since we got started."

"Then I think it's time we got three steps ahead," Supergirl told them. "And in case you've forgotten, I happen to have friends who can help us get past that." She turned to Jeremiah Smith. "We're going to need your help, too."

"Anything I can do." Smith told them.

"That's exactly what we're going to need. Anything."

OUTSIDE THE CATCO BUILDING

11:53 P.M.

Mulder had been hoping that CSM didn't have a backup plan for what was about to come. As was inevitably the case with the Syndicate, they seemed ridiculously ready for any extenuating circumstance.

They drove for ten minutes before coming to a stop. When they did, Mulder's stomach dropped as he saw a familiar face. One that the last time he had seen, there had been an endless number standing over him in that chair he'd been strapped to.

"You risk much by bringing me here," the Bounty Hunter said.

"Necessity brings about improvisation." The old man seemed to have lost whatever fear he'd had before; his smug veneer of bravado was back.

The alien's face remained as stony as ever. Samantha, however, winced. And why shouldn't she? Even though they had only been clones, whenever his sister had been around this creature, death followed for her.

"Why do we continue to deal with this one?"

"After tonight, he will no longer be an issue." The old man took out a Morley. "He's finally outlived his usefulness."

Mulder was finally alone with the two beings – he wouldn't dare call either one human even though they had the form of one – who had made it their lives' mission to torment him, and he couldn't think of anything to say either one of them. What was the point? Neither one had ever told him the truth, and now that his death seemed to be certain, he'd run out of questions to ask.

"We'll drive up to the front of the building. You will assume the form of one of the Mulders," Cancer Man said as calmly as if he were giving a breakfast order to a waitress. "One minute after you enter the lobby, the power will go out. When it does, you are to terminate everyone in the building."

"Will the Kryptonian be there?" This was the first indication that the colonists had even known of Supergirl.

"There is a possibility of that. If she interferes, you have permission to remove her as well."

What might have passed for a smile went over the Bounty Hunter's face. "She tried to interfere with our work two days ago. Honor must be satisfied."

"After everything you've done to this planet, you actually claim to have honor?"

It was something Mulder would've said, but the words had come from Samantha. Cancer Man didn't even bother to react.

The Bounty Hunter did. "You and your brother have been a pestilence to our work for too long," he said dismissively. "You should be proud that your genetics will end up making sure the project will succeed in the final days."

"You rape me of my DNA, and expect me to be grateful?" Samantha snarled.

The Bounty Hunter fixed his sister with a look that might have contained pity. "Everything dies," he said calmly. "Because of you, part of your race will go on."

Suddenly, Mulder did have a question. "Did we ever have a chance to stop you?" he asked the Cancer Man.

The arrogance was momentarily gone. There seemed a look of genuine pity on the old man's face, which frankly for Mulder felt even worse than any scorn.

"You knew the answer to that when you were put on trial," he said calmly. "You have to have known that dozens of times over the years. How many years did you rage against the machine, Fox? You kept fighting the wrong war. You focused so much on exposure that you never tried to make alliances or keep the ones you had. You were whispering into reeds while so many others were shouting."

Mulder considered this. For much of his career at the Bureau, it had seemed to be the case. All that was left was one more question. "Then why didn't you just kill me?"

The old man took a drag. "I promised your father I wouldn't."

Despite everything that he had heard, despite the horror show that was likely to unfold, that brief sentence gave Mulder hope he didn't know he still had. By finally telling him that Bill Mulder was his father, and not this void of humanity, it gave him a spark of life that he had thought the last few hours might have snuffed out. He wasn't going to give up, no matter how horrific or enormous the odds were.

Now, as the car idled outside the building, the Smoking Man got off the phone. "Our people are in position." He nodded to one of the people in the front see. "Gag Samantha. It would appear she has an even bigger mouth than her brother."

Mulder couldn't help himself. "If you've got to send one of us out, let it be me."

The cruelty was back. "Always the martyr. No. You took away all of my plans for the future. So you get to see everybody you love slaughtered. Then you have my permission to die."

Scully's phone rang. "What?"

"Come to the lobby. You and Miss Grant. Two minutes."

She walked over to Supergirl. "It's about to happen. You ready on your end?"

She nodded. "Agent Danvers and her people are two blocks away. They've got eyes on two cars less than a block away. They're resistant to body heat and X-rays, so we don't know how many of them were facing."

"However many they send, it's safe to assume that they're not all human." She looked at Cat Grant. "You sure you're ready for this?"

"I just talked to James. We're ready to upload on your signal."

Scully took a long pause. "No matter how this turns out, I don't know how to thank you."

"You're about to give me the story of the millennium, and it's only fifteen years old. I should be thanking you." Cat told her. "Besides, I haven't finished paying my debt yet."

Scully took a deep breath. "Here we go."

The elevator binged. The five armed men – absent the Smoking Man, of course – looked towards the elevator. Cat Grant and Dana Scully came out of it.

Grant looked around. "Whatever this man's paying you, it isn't enough." She looked around. "Was it really necessary to gag and bind them? _We're_ not the monsters here."

"He doesn't like either of them much right now," said a man with prematurely gray hair.

Scully shook her head, and went right to her partner. Acting quickly and surreptitiously, she untied him and removed the gag. "Are you all right?"

Mulder looked at her deeply. "Wait a minute. Something's wrong."

Before the men could react, the lights in the building went dark.

'Mulder' morphed into the Bounty Hunter. "You're not human."

'Scully' took the form of Martian Manhunter. "Neither are you."

A split second after that, Supergirl arrived on the scene. "You're having a party for extraterrestrials, and you didn't think to invite me? I'm so hurt."

"Boss, it's a double –" One of the mercenaries had no time to react before Supergirl had snatched all of their weapons and armaments out of their hands.

"Boys, boys. You really should no better than to come into my town, and make a mess and not expect there to be consequences," Supergirl admonished them.

"Oh don't worry," said the Gray-Haired Man. "We did." He took out a small watch. "Little something courtesy of our tech department. " He pressed a button, and it began to grow a bright green.

Supergirl, who was only now beginning to feel at full strength, suddenly felt her knees begin to weaken.

Martian Manhunter saw what was happening, but the Bounty Hunter had taken advantage of the distractions to hit him as hard as he could in the jaw. It didn't stagger the Green Martian, but he did fall back a little, long enough for the colossus to kick him in the stomach.

"A race so pitiful they died in a civil war," the Bounty Hunter snarled.

"Considering your own problems, I wouldn't take the high road," Jonn got to his feet, and smashed the Bounty Hunter in the jaw. "Both of my people have chosen to destroy creatures you like you."

The trace of a smile appeared on the Bounty Hunter's face. "We've extinguished civilizations older than yours before," he said. "It will be a privilege to finish what your own people couldn't."

Supergirl was observing all this, but her head was in a bit of a fog as the Grey-Haired Man approached her slowly, holding his watch aloft like Van Helsing would hold a crucifix.

"All these years of unbeatable aliens, and you drop just like a little girl," the man said as he got closer to her. "Even if everything else goes to hell –"

That was as far as he got. In the midst of the chaos going on with every alien and his father showing up, everyone seemed to have forgotten Samantha. She might have been half the Grey-Haired Man's size, but there was something to be said for the element of surprise. She tackled him from across the room. She didn't move him that much, but it was enough to get the watch out of Supergirl's face.

Supergirl recovered enough to get a look at what was going on between Jonn and the Bounty Hunter to know that she had to uneven the odds. "You know, I still owe you for Munich, " she said before throwing herself at her.

Mulder had seen the Smoking Man in many different moods over the years, but not being able to get any reports from his men in Catco was the first time that he'd ever seen him close to panicking.

"Get us out of here," he ordered his driver. Then he reached for his gun. "It seemed I've underestimated your friends for the last time. "

"Don't count your chickens" Mulder snapped.

"I was able to shoot my own son, remember?"

"Maybe you have the stones. But I have something you never did." Mulder said.

And at that very moment, a car pulled up in front and one behind the one that they were driving in.

"Friends."

The driver's side window was smashed open. To reveal a _very _pissed off Alex Danvers. "To use an appropriate cliché, you're under arrest."

"Do you have any idea who I am?" the Smoking Man shouted.

"Not a clue." Alex said. "But right now, what your actual name is, is the least thing that interests me about you. Drop the damn gun."

The fight was becoming a brawl, so Supergirl decided to end the battle early. Using strength that she didn't think she hand, she grabbed the Bounty Hunter and climbed to the skies. It wasn't easy. The alien Bounty Hunter put up a hell of a struggle.

"You think this proves anything?" Even nearly a hundred feet from the ground, the Bounty Hunter was still calm. "Our numbers are greater yours. Our roots are deep. There is nothing you can do that we can't."

"Really?" Supergirl said. "Then flap your arms."

She did something she didn't think she'd have been able to do even yesterday, and let him go. She thought for half a second, then shrugged and flew to the ground.

He was lying on the pavement, bones clearly broken and shattered, but clearly still alive. She was pretty sure that dropping him even from that high wouldn't have killed him – the files indicated that these beings had survived far worse - but she wasn't entirely sure that would've been that brutal. "Alex, get a strike force around the front of the building, " she said. "The Bounty Hunter's down, but I'm pretty sure he is not out."

And at that moment, she heard a gunshot. There were a lot of places it could've come from, but that part of her sense hadn't been dulled.

When she got back to the Catco lobby, she saw the second worse thing she'd feared.

Jonn and two operatives were holding guns on the remaining mercenaries. Mulder was standing over his sister, who was lying on the floor, blood flowing from a bullet wound in the stomach.

"Get her to a hospital!" Mulder shouted. "She's gonna die."

"Nobody's going to die."

Everybody turned to Cat Grant, who had a serenity that seemed utterly unsupported by the situation. She walked over to Samantha.

And morphed into Jeremiah Smith.

The Grey-Haired Man, who was being restrained by two other agents, watched in shock, as Smith knelt over Samantha, and placed his hand over the wound. In a matter of seconds, the blood seemed to evaporate, and Samantha gave a huge gasp.

Mulder was stunned. "Which one were you?" he managed to say.

Jeremiah looked at him. "I'm so sorry I wasn't able to help you in New Mexico," he said simply. "This repays my debt."

Mulder was at a loss for words for once in his life.

"You may have contingency plans," Jonn said to them, "but we've got plans for them."

Alex Danvers entered the building with another agent. "He's secure. Won't give us his name, though."

Mulder had recovered. "I'm not sure he even has one. Just take away his goddamn cigarettes, he'll tell you in a heartbeat." He paused. "He does have one, right?"

"Far as we can tell," Alex looked at her sister. "You all right?"

"Fine, all things considered. " She gestured towards the Grey-Haired Man. "Be careful when you search that one. He has way too many toys for my sake."

Mulder looked down at his sister who, apart from the hole in her shirt now looked perfectly fine. "Samantha, are you okay?"

"Remind me not to do that again," Samantha said with the only slightest bit of strain.

He actually laughed. "Little chance of that. Remember how stubborn we Mulders are."

By now, Jonn had morphed back into his Hank Henshaw form. "Winn, how long until we can restore power?"

"Working on it now, sir," Winn told him. "National City should be back online in ten minutes."

"Then let's take our prisoners back to the DEO," Jonn told them.

"Not yet. There's one thing we have to do first." Kara walked over to Alex. "I'm no legal expert, but I'm pretty sure that trying to call the people you say you've negotiated a deal with pretty much shoots that deal to hell, right?"

"I would say so." Alex agreed. She got on her earpiece. "Winn, release the Kraken."

Mulder looked blank. "What the hell does that mean?"

"Right about now, our invaluable tech expert is in the process of releasing every single sordid detail about the Syndicate's plan to sell out mankind to every law enforcement agency in the world." Supergirl told him. "About two minutes after that, every DEO office across the globe is going to be conducting raids on every known government implicated in the conspiracy."

A smile unlike any that Supergirl had seen crossed Mulder's face. "Was this Scully's idea?" he asked.

"She was in the room." Supergirl told him cheerfully.

Mulder got to his feet. "With your permission, I'd like to gently break this news to Old Smokey."

"Permission granted, Mr. Mulder." Jonn told him. "By the way, on behalf of the DEO, we would like to publicly commend you and Dana Scully for all of year's working towards bringing this information to the public. And we really hope that your previous tenure at the Bureau wouldn't discourage you from working then again. Soon."

Mulder's smile became even bigger, if that were possible. He seemed to skip out the door.

"See you back at the DEO?" Alex asked her sister.

"I'll be there in an hour," Kara Danvers' smile was even bigger than Mulder's, if that were possible. "I've got a story to write."


	15. Epilogue

EPILOGUE

CATCO TV

ONE WEEK LATER

"I have to tell you, Agent Mulder, that I've seen a lot of revolutionary changes in my career as a journalist, but very few as rapid as the ones that have ensured in the past week," Cat Grant was telling her audience.

"I am more than willing to acknowledge that Catherine," Mulder was saying, "but even after everything that's happened, complacency is what the people behind this encourage. Even hope for. I thought the conspiracy was dead and gone in 1999. The fact that you're interviewing us, just shows how dangerous that kind of thinking can be."

Cat Grant took her traditional Diane Sawyer like pose. "I think that's a safe assumption. All right agents, you're the experts. What words of advice would you give the public? What can we do?"

Mulder considered this for a moment. "I've always wanted to believe that the truth will out. But I know that, in this day and age, in particular, everybody having their own truth is becoming more and more a reality. So here are some precautions. We must unify. The conspirators may be down, but they are far from out. And even if we engage in magical thinking and assume that somehow we can take down every one of the ones on Earth, it doesn't change the fact that, the invaders are out there, still planning to conquer and subjugate. We must be vigilant."

Scully spoke up. "And we must not give in to our prejudices. Even before previous events, there were examples of xenophobia and alien-bashing occurring throughout the globe. Division is exactly how we become conquered. Just as every other racial group on the planet, there are good aliens and bad aliens. Even among the alien race that is coming to conquer us, there are those who are trying to fight against them. If we decide to unilaterally turn on all aliens because of the actions of one, I shudder to think of the world we will become."

"Those are strong words, particularly given everything you have already undergone," Cat asked. "What are you plans once you return to the Bureau? Can you give us any ideas?"

"The FBI has been willing to give us a bit more latitude in our scope," Mulder told Cat. "While Scully and I fully intend to resume the fight, we are well aware that no one can carry it out alone. We intend to begin a recruitment drive, hopefully getting enough allies within government – and without – that can hopefully help defend the planet against whatever evils might soon be coming."

"Fox Mulder and Dana Scully. It has been a pleasure and a privilege to talk with you again. I hope I don't have to wait another twenty years to get an opportunity."

Cat Grant looked at the camera. "We live in interesting times. That was clear long before Superman and Supergirl arrived on the scene. A conspiracy that lasted more than seventy years was finally exposed to the light of day last week. I want to believe that is the end of the story. But to paraphrase Churchill, I fear it is not the end, nor even the beginning of the end. Rather the end of the beginning. We now live in a brave new world. But these worlds seem to be coming every day, and as Mulder and Scully demonstrated, even the things that we've spent the last few years considering revolutionary were neither brave nor new to them. The question is this time; can we learn from our mistakes? Can we even admit we've made them?" A long pause. "This has been Cat Grant."

Mulder and Scully waited until everybody says the mikes were dead before turning to Cat. "You're getting very philosophical in your old age, Catherine," Scully said gently.

"What can I say? The two of you have given the world a lot to think about the last week or so." Cat said, as she got off her chair.

"And how long do you think it'll last? Until the next political gaffe? Until Beyonce's next video?" Mulder told him. "Even a few years ago, we could count on a twenty-four hour news cycle. Now we'll be lucky to last a tweet."

"You sure you never worked in media, Mulder? You sure as hell have the cynicism of somebody who has." Cat got up. "Or is this your passive-aggressive way of saying this is at least partially my fault?"

"You know me better than that, Catherine," Mulder told her. "I was never passive in my life."

Cat actually smiled at that. "As you go forward, don't you dare forget the allies you made here," she told him. "Anything you need or want, don't hesitate to call."

Scully shot her the brow. "Seriously?"

"If I'd been on your side twenty years ago, maybe some of this could've been avoided," Cat reminded her. "I'd like to think this puts on even terms again, but just in case, I want to make you sure you don't have to run against the stonewall of bureaucracy any more without options."

"I've talked with Skinner. We've got a bit more latitude now that we're reinstated," Mulder replied.

"Then maybe just call to keep me in the loop," Cat said. "Hell, the last couple of weeks must have convinced you can't just go through things on your own anymore."

Mulder nodded.

"One last thing." Cat waited until they were alone. "I did some digging. Adoption trails are hard to keep track of, even these days. All I know for certain is that the trail ended in Wyoming."

Scully's eyes grew soft. "Do you have… any leads on the parents?"

"Sorry," Cat admitted. "But it's a small state. I'll keep digging."

Mulder was clearly moved, too, so he tried to hide it by going back to business. "Before we move out, we'd like to have one more conversation with Kara Danvers."

"All right, say 'Daily Planet'"

"James!"

And so the picture of Kara holding a printout of her first byline had her with a look of disapproval on her face. Well, not much considering that the headline was listed about the fold.

SHADOW GOVERNMENT TO EARTH: DROP DEAD!

_Figures in High Position Conspired to Sell Out Planet to Aliens_

"I got to tell you, it still sounds like something that you'd see in the _Star _rather than Catco, even after everything that's happened," James told her.

"Welcome to the world we live in,' Kara gave a sigh. "And despite the headline, I'm positive we're nowhere near out of the woods yet."

"Since when have we ever been?" James said wryly. "How's the DEO handling it?"

"The files gave us something to go on, but not enough," Kara admitted. "Not to mention that less than a day after the raids, we dealt with the most insidious threat of all." She made a face. "Lawyers."

James winced. "They wouldn't mind selling out the planet as long as they got their contingency fee. How the hell did they work around you?"

"They pointed out that our raids violated the DEO charter. We're fine when it comes to dealing with aliens, but when it comes to their human accomplices that falls outside our purview. "Kara snarled. "Not to mention the fact that they still have alliances with the agencies we come to for money. And that was with just the people we managed to hold. Prior to our raids, many of the people we were chasing were either killed suspiciously or disappeared into the ether." Kara shook her head. "After that, my guess is, we'll probably never hear from them again."

"'The greatest trick the devil ever pulled, was convincing the world he didn't exist'," James quoted.

"Oh, we still have the devil," Kara admitted. "He's under twenty-four hour guard right now. But he hasn't said a single word since the DEO took him in. Still won't give us his name. It might as well be Keyser Soze, for all the records we can find on him. Fingerprints, DNA, Social Security, there isn't a single damn thing on him."

"Why would there be? Given everything Mulder and Scully told us, he probably made sure they were expunged years ago," James asked. "What about Reyes? Any sign of her?"

"Completely off the grid. Ditto Marita Covarrubias." Kara shook her head. "But it was never clear which side they were ever on. They managed to stay off the grid for over a decade. Someone just as powerful was protecting them."

"So the conspirators are gone, but the conspiracy still going." James sat down. "What's the next step?"

"For once, we're going to look to another source. Mulder said he wanted to talk me before he and the others left for DC. Says we've got to make plans going forward."

James paused. "Is there anything I can do to help?"

Kara looked at him. "You know, Winn told me that you wanted to make some kind of plans about helping with something other than a camera."

James sighed. "The guy just can't keep his mouth shut sometimes."

"We're going to need heroes going forward. But we're going to need people behind the scenes just as much." Kara looked as Mulder and Scully walked forward. "Keep that in mind."

"Anything we can do for you before you leave?" James asked.

"We'd do well to ask you the same question." Scully said. "We've already thanked Catherine, but we know damn well this wouldn't have been possible without both of your help."

"Especially you, Kara," Mulder said. "I wanted to apologize for getting you involved in everything. I've ditched Scully a lot over the years, and it's always come back to bite me, but at least then, I managed to keep civilians from getting shanghaied."

"I can take care of myself," Kara told her.

"You've proven that, too," Scully replied. "I see a lot of good things in your future."

Mulder puts his in his pockets. "Mr. Olsen, this is a little awkward, but we kind of have some FBI business that I have to go through with Kara. Would you give us five minutes?"

James seemed a little confused. "You okay, Kara?"

"I'll tell you about it later," she assured him.

After James left, she reached into her desk and removed a piece of paper. "Where are you going first?"

"We're going to need a couple of weeks to settle back in. Maybe chase down a mutant or too." Mulder told her. "Then we're going to pay a visit to Star City."

Kara was surprised. "Not Central City? I met him, believe me, he's going to be a lot more open to extreme possibilities."

"If he's who I think is, I think it is far more important we make contact with the Arrow." Mulder told them.

Kara's face couldn't hide her shock. "You know who he is?"

"Believe me; figuring out the Arrow's secret identity took a lot less work than figuring out yours."

Kara blushed a little. "Thank you for not outing me, by the way."

"Kara, you walked in our shoes for just forty-eight hours," Scully told her. "Our lives would've been so much easier if we'd had secret identities."

"Besides, having seen both of you in action, the world needs Kara Danvers as much as it needs Supergirl." Mulder paused. "That being said, there are a lot of people in the government who want to know who you are. I'll do what I can to hold them off, but you've seen just how ruthless they can be."

"Agent Mulder, I knew that before I put on the costume." Kara told him. "But thank you."

"Give my best to your sister." Scully said. "And your cousin. Not to state the obvious, but we're going to need his help going forward, too."

"I wish I could say I hope we don't need your help that soon," Kara said. "But I have a feeling the future is coming towards us fast."

"It may already be here.' Mulder told her. "It's a good thing we have heroes, too."

As the two of them left the office, James came back in. "You ready to tell me what that is about?"

"Actually, it was pretty simple." Kara told him. "Mulder knows that the world is in danger. And if the last few days have proved anything, it's that it's bigger than Scully, the DEO, or even Supergirl. So in a couple of weeks, when the spotlight has died down a little, he and Scully are going on a cross country recruitment drive."

"Interesting," James told them. "He's getting a team together."

"Actually, he called it a league."

UNDISCLOSED LOCATION

"Considering our somewhat exposed position, I suppose that no one objects to introducing our newest member," Monica Reyes was saying to the remains of the Syndicate.

"Speaking purely from my perspective, no," Marita Covarrubias said. "Though considering where we are these days, I wonder if it's in our interest to have some as anti-alien in our midst."

"My cousin made a series of very persuasive arguments," Lillian Luthor replied. "At the top of them, she mentioned Bill Mulder's initial project all those years ago. I think that it might be one worth pursuing."

"That's not a bad idea as far as it goes. But in order to proceed in the first place, we needed access to an alien genome." Strughold said. "The colonists have been very loathe to hand over any more of those since the original plans for the invasion failed."

"We're going to rectify that," Monica said. "Courtesy of one of our shadow members."

"And when is that going to happen?" Marita asked.

"Any minute now."

DEO CONTAINMENT VAULT

It was one of the least accessible places in the world – unless you knew somebody with clearance.

Normally, Deadshot believed in making his presence with much more flair. But he had received very strict instruction. This was a wet insert operation. Get the material, remove the subject, and exit the premises. Security camera would be shut down around the designated area for exactly two minutes. One minute and fifty five second more than he needed, but who was he to risk defying those bitches' orders?

He got to the cell. He had to admit, the creature was someone he wouldn't have wanted to meet in a fair fight. Then again, he tended to avoid fair fights whenever possible.

If the alien had any idea who he was, he gave no idea of it. "Which master do you serve?" was all he asked.

"Someone far above our paygrade, and that's all you need to know." He took out the needle. "You know what this is about, right?"

"The work must go on," he said, not even flinching. "Compared to that, any one creature's life is irrelevant."

Good. He wasn't going to make a scene. Deadshot put on the mask, and removed a syringe and a test tube. Within thirty seconds, he had what he needed. "My orders are too make this painless," he said. "And to thank you for service."

The creature nodded. Deadshot could respect him for that. He took out the stiletto he'd been given, and stabbed the creature in the back of the neck.

Then, because he couldn't resist the urge, he took out a single playing card and placed it in the center of the stand.

He made his way out of the room.

Thirty seconds later, the cameras would come back on, and all that would remain was the standard remains of green chemicals. The playing card would dissolve too, but the last thing the camera would pick up was two letters on the back.

SS.

STAR LABS

CENTRAL CITY

"Uh, guys. We've got a problem," Dr. Cisco Ramone told them.

"We have a lot of problems, Cisco," Caitlin Snow responded. "Barry's MIA and we're currently absent a Harrison Wells."

"It might actually be bigger than that. Like Skynet taking over the world bad," Cisco looked grimmer than he had even throughout the entire Zoom affair.

"What is it?" Iris asked.

"After Barry disappeared, I checked in the room with the paper," Cisco said slowly. "And there was like a serious '_Back to the Future II' _type change. Only this time, it seemed bigger than just the fact the Flash had disappeared."

Now both women were concerned. "What its say now?"

By now, they'd all walked to the room. Cisco took a deep breath. "Take a look."

They entered the room. And it didn't take a genius to no just what had happened.

The date was still the same. November 16, 2019. But now the Flash wasn't even in the headline in all.

Instead, there were three pictures. One showed something that had to be a UFO standing over the Empire State Building. There was one over the Taj Mahal. And one over Star Labs.

The headline read: "CONVENTIONAL FORCES SEEM UNAVAILABLE TO STOP ALIEN INVASION." And then, in smaller letters: _Where is Supergirl?_

The three of them just stared at this for over a minute. Cisco said the only thing imaginable.

"Houston, we have one hell of a problem."

THE END…

… FOR NOW

**Author's note: I was intending this to be a one-shot, but I think I have an epic in the making. I'll begin work on Part 2 sometime next year, and it will take place almost entire in the world of **_**Arrow. **_**Don't worry, I have a cunning plan**.


End file.
